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Good morning. At the beginning of this election campaign it is healthy to step back a little and ask ourselves a fundamental question. What is our basic understanding of a good society? Behind all the debates about Brexit or particular party policies is there a shared vision of what makes for a good society, with the divisions just about means to achieve that end? or do we differ in our fundamental ideas? The question of what makes for a good society has of course been endlessly debated from the time of the great thinkers in Athens in the 5th century before Christ. It was also a question that the poet T.S. Eliot. wrestled with all through the difficult 1930s. A turning point for him was the signing of the Munich agreement, which allowed Nazi Germany to annex Western Czechoslovakia. This left him, he wrote, with a fundamental doubt about the validity of our whole civilisation. He wondered if it stood for anything more than the maintenance of dividends? Well, thank goodness, the Second World War showed that we did stand for something. What he wrote about Munich appeared in a book in which he sketched out his answer to the question which so concerned him. Although he wrote as a Christian, he made it clear that he did not envisage Christians being in charge, indeed he knew that they would be a minority. What he wrote was this It would be a society in which the natural end of man-virtue and well-being in community-is acknowledged for all, and the supernatural end-beatitude-for those who have the eyes to see it. This last phrase assumes freedom of religion, the most fundamental of all freedoms, something we take for granted in this country, but which is still, sadly, denied to about half the world. He stresses that the good must be for all, a goal I hope we would all share. Then, in line with much modern thinking he stresses not economic growth but “well-being in Community”. And I like that stress on community. We are not isolated individuals. What would have been taken for granted by the ancient Greeks and our own society at least until 1918, but is less in evidence today, is the inclusion of that word virtue. We think of this in relation to private life, but there are special virtues we look for in those aspiring to public office: integrity, for example, courage to stand up against prejudice of all kinds, good judgement, truthfulness. These are important in private life of course - and in business - but the quality of our political life absolutely depends on them. Of course politics is about the art of the possible, it often involves necessary compromises, and the selection of facts is almost always slanted in some way. But unless we can trust one another and trust our politicians to share those virtues so essential to public office, the quality of our life together can only fray.