Clifford Longley (7 February) points to the common factor of general public disillusionment with politicians as their collective failure to demonstrate virtue in public life. He suggests that “Britain may be ruled by too many career politicians of Left or Right who studied the same PPE – philosophy, politics and economics – course at Oxford and share its underlying assumption”.Aristotle agrees with Longley and points out that the reason for politicians’ demonstrable lack of virtue is that they studied PPE at undergraduate level in the first place: “A young person is not fitted to hear lectures on political science, since our discussions begin from and concern the actions of life, and of these he has no experience” (Nicomachean Ethics). (Fr) Stephe