Andrew McKie: Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds got married because they love one another so leave them alone

The latest example of this is the Prime Minister having had the effrontery to get married quietly. Somehow this is evidence of his duplicity, contempt for the rules, greed, entitlement and general moral turpitude because, for his opponents, if Mr Johnson were to do anything at all, such as put the kettle on or buy a Mars bar, it would provide ample proof of his unsuitability for being allowed to exist, let alone be in office.

This kind of stuff has reached ludicrous proportions, perhaps because the echo chamber of social media has enabled the minority who combine censoriousness with a total lack of both humour and proportion to reassure each other that their perspective is the norm, or at least the moral high ground, when two minutes in the pub would see their opinions laughed out of the room by any normal person.

READ MORE: Andrew McKie: Is this the end of summer holidays abroad?

That is the extreme, of course: the kind of people who think that the innocuous use of everyday words – “blackboard”, say, or “scotch” – indicate racism, who want to destroy every statue or memorial to anyone with “problematic” views, or think that any reform to the NHS, even if it were on the lines of the German, French or Dutch models, is “literally fascism”.

Let’s leave them aside and consider the rest of us, who are relatively sane. Most of us are nonetheless quite bad at understanding why other people don’t share our outrage at the things that infuriate us.

Part of that, no doubt, is a shift in cultural and moral norms in recent decades. Even though the majority of us may feel most of these are overwhelmingly for the better, it is indisputable that they create uncertainty, disagreement and friction; much of it generational, but also sociological and geographical.

This is the root of distinctions such as the “Somewheres” and “Anywheres” the political scientist Matthew Goodwin identifies as crucial in analysing Brexit, or Tory success in “Red Wall” seats, but it applies to plenty of other issues, too.

The solution is liberalism in its classical formulation, where you can disapprove heartily of someone else’s beliefs or choices, but don’t regard yourself as having the right to prevent them holding them. An outstanding exemplar of this is the gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell backing the freedom of speech of those who express disapproval of homosexuality – something he has consistently done.

By contrast, many who regard themselves as “progressive” are now illiberal; indeed, the foundational ideas of “cancel culture”, “no-platforming” and critical gender and race theory are intrinsically illiberal. The permissive society doesn’t permit quite a lot of things.

The Prime Minister’s wedding seems to demonstrate this. It has prompted several lines of attack, almost all either nonsensical or contradictory. One is that Mr Johnson is a serial love-rat. This has never been a secret, or even something he seems particularly ashamed of; in his journalism, he mounted repeated defences of the adulteries of Robin Cook, Bill Clinton and Lord Palmerston.

Naturally, you’re free to disapprove of that, but it runs counter to the general contemporary view that the private lives of politicians, unless there’s corruption or criminality, aren’t relevant to their job. Perhaps this was always a widespread attitude: Disraeli didn’t want Palmerston’s infidelities publicised, because he thought it would make him more popular.

READ MORE: Andrew McKie: What can Starmer do to save Labour?

Another is that, because Mr Johnson is divorced but got married in a Catholic ceremony, it is either hypocritical, or unfair to divorced Catholics who can’t get married in church. But for once this isn’t an instance of “the rules not applying to Boris”.

Since he was baptised as a Catholic, but his previous marriages were under the rites of the Church of England, they don’t count and this is, for the Catholic church, his first valid wedding. That is no doubt annoying for Roman Catholics who have been divorced and would like to get married again, but it’s something to take up with the church, not the PM.

Personally, I would be quite interested to discover whether Mr Johnson is now the UK’s first Catholic Prime Minister (Tony Blair didn’t convert until after he left office), but it’s surely a matter of pub quiz trivia rather than, as it might have been a century and a half ago, some urgent constitutional issue. But why anyone, especially those who don’t subscribe to or actively complain about the church, should be affronted, or care much about it, eludes me.

Some media reports seem to be confected from a general indignation that they didn’t get to know about the wedding in advance. That’s just sour grapes. I’m as nosy as the next hack, but I can’t really see that keeping a ceremony relatively private and small-scale in some way renders it secretive and underhand. We did, after all, know that the PM was going to get married and, while I would quite have liked an invitation to my old colleague’s nuptials, I didn’t really expect one.

Those who dislike the Prime Minister’s politics, or disapprove of him because of their perception of his character are not easily going to be persuaded that they are mistaken. And I have no particular desire to change their minds, nor any great urge to defend him against every charge.

But it is absurd – and makes you look absurd – to try to present every act of a public figure of whom you take a dim view as if it were yet further proof of how awful they are. Mr Johnson and Miss Symonds presumably got married because they love one another. You’re not obliged to love them, too, because it’s not really any of your business.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald.