The MP John Redwood has hired a London PR firm to raise his profile. The firm is keen for him to feature in lifestyle articles, when he will talk about his great love of windsurfing, films and theatre. ‘John is happy to talk about a wide range of subjects,’ we are told, including ‘his favourite restaurant/food and his passion for motoring.’ It sounds an exciting prospect – how one longs to hear about why he loves going vroom – and all too horribly typical of Plato’s democratic man.
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In his Republic, Plato analyses the way in which societies degenerate over time and mutate from one type of political system to another. Oligarchies, he argues, tend to become democracies (the fourth lowest system in Plato’s ranking, only one above the worst, tyranny), and democratic man is characterised by his poor upbringing and lack of values and sound habits.
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