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Over the last few months I’ve been leading an international research project on the topic of loyalty. Funded by an American philanthropist, the project has brought mainly Christian and Muslim scholars and thinkers together to explore loyalty as both as a virtue and a vice. The project has also funded art and music prizes because artistic imagination is essential in helping us to think about the stories we tell about our lives. Loyalty can be both admirable and dangerous. For the Roman orator Cicero, loyalty or fides was a central virtue and he said, ‘nothing is more noble, more venerable than loyalty’. Loyalty is rooted in a sense of identity and allegiance to a person, family, group or culture. And while not everyone sees unconditional loyalty as a virtue, there is generally agreement that disloyalty, the betrayal of loyalty – the failure to be trustworthy or dependable – is a vice. Christian and Islamic traditions assume a degree of loyalty in the language of faith and covenant. The commandment to love one God means that monotheism is itself an expression of loyalty to a particular conception of God. This oneness is articulated in different ways in both faiths and for the Muslim, the belief in God’s oneness is essentially a call for trust and faithfulness in God. But the multiple scriptural commands to turn to God are also a reminder that faith isn’t easy, it requires patience and demands a certain kind of surrender. It’s an interesting time to reflect on loyalty, a word that seems to crop up in so many discussions on societal and cultural values. Faith brings its own challenges and our family loyalties are tested all the time, sometimes at huge personal costs. Love in marriage is based on moral expectations enshrined in vows of mutual sexual fidelity. And when it comes to friendships, for some the greatest gift of life, I’m reminded of the words of the Italian writer Francesco Alberoni, `Friendship dies through trauma when it is betrayed.’ Over the last few days, it’s become obvious that many politicians have been caught in the competing demands of loyalty to country, to their own ambition, and to their leader. Every organisation needs a level of loyalty to function but loyalty becomes misplaced when we focus only on individuals. For society to change, I think we have to move organisations far more towards notions of loyalty to first principles - transparency, integrity and fairness.