This proverb which warns against dancing with the devil probably dates back to the early medieval period, when there was a strong sense of the presence of the devil in the world. While I don’t believe in the devil as such as I believe that mankind has sufficient potential to do evil without need of the help of a malign supernatural being; I do think it aids explanation to reduce  what is that nexus of  power and evil intent to a personified term the devil. I suspect the medieval users of this proverb were quite aware of the potential to commit evil within us all, but they saw the value of having one simple proverb to remind people of the perils of being complicit in evil. Complicity with the devil would mean either being burnt in this life as witch or suffering the fires of eternal damnation in the next.

What I am writing about is not the individual who acts with evil intent, the one who wishes harm on his fellow men. The serial killer now matter how appalling and frequent are their crimes, they can only hurt a small number of people. What matters to me is the people of evil intent who have the power to commit crimes on a much larger scale. People such as Chairman Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot were monsters and its easy to write them of as exceptions to general run of humankind.Yet there are those politicians of evil intent in the Western democracies that abuse power to cause hurt and pain to millions so as to secure some financial advantage for themselves and their friends. Usually these politicians claim a religious sanction for their actions. There is hardly one of these politicians that would not claim to be a good Christian. Yet they seem unaware of the religious injunction to treat your neighbour as you would yourself. To be fair they do have some sense of neighbourliness, there neighbours they understand are people such as themselves, the great majority, those outside their friendship groups don’t qualify as neighbours. These are the politicians that will impose punitive sanctions on the undeserving poor, while also give generous government contracts to their friends. A recent newspaper article claimed that £500 million was given in contracts to business to assess the fitness or otherwise of benefit claimants. Ministers felt £500 millions was better spent this way, than on the undeserving poor.

Evil may take many forms, but in this essay I am taking it to policies undertaken by politicians which impoverish or cause misery to thousands if not millions, as a means of securing some financial advantage for their friends.

What concerns me is the extent to which social democrat politicians have become complicit in this evil. They have ‘danced with the devil’ in the misguided belief that they can get some advantage by doing so, securing a benefit for the people that would not otherwise be available. Medieval man new that the devil never kept his promises and that all he wanted was to corrupt the soul of the innocent who sought his help.

There is one social democratic politician that exemplifies this tendency. This politician was one of the highest achieving students in economics at one of the countries elite universities. Yet when the Chancellor of the Exchequer made a pronouncement about economic policy, which any sane economist would recognise as nonsense, he instead of opposing the measure supported it. He claimed it showed responsibility to follow the governments lead and it would win support from the voters. He claimed that voters would never vote for a party that appeared irresponsible in matters relating to the economy. It is unfair to say that he was entirely responsible for the adoption of nonsense economics, as all the other senior members of the party agreed with him. (Although they were not as talented an economist as him, they had all secured good degrees at elite universities, which would have given them the analytical skills to identify nonsense when it was spoken by a government minister.) The consequence was that this party appeared indistinguishable from the government to many of its supporters. These disillusioned supporters drifted to other parties that appeared to promise those policies to which this party refused to commit. This party is now haemorrhaging support to those ‘irresponsible’ parties of the populist right and of the nationalist persuasion.

These politician’s who ‘danced with the devil’ thought by being complicit in one evil they could secure a greater good. The greater good they sought was the power, which would then enable them to implement a political programme to alleviate the suffering of the many. What is extraordinary about this saga is that these self same politicians had been involved in campaigning groups that sought to alleviate the miseries of poverty.  They were people who had campaigned for many good causes and as group were more probably more virtuous than any other group of people, yet these politicians as a group were willing to sign up a policy that was contrary to what they believed, because they though it would secure them some advantage.

Faustus sold his soul to the devil in exchange for securing the love of the most beautiful woman in history, Helen of Troy. Social democratic politicians throughout the Western democracies have sold their souls to the devil in return for the chimera of power. Unlike these politicians Faustus got a much better price for his soul, all they secured was the promise not the gift of power.