My enemy’s enemy – not always my friend, by Ben Jeapes

Photo by Steve Johnson on pexels.com 

This isn’t a political group, but I’m afraid this post strays inevitably into the political world. I’ll try to stay neutral.

Speaking as a ghostwriter, the most challenging aspect of the recent WhatsApp leaks has been – well, the ghostwriting.

Just in case it’s already old news by the time these word appear on the blog – I’m writing on Monday, they will appear on Friday, and that’s a long time in politics – ex-Health Secretary Matt Hancock hired a ghostwriter, Isabel Oakeshott, to help write his account of his handling of the pandemic. In doing so she gained access to several thousand WhatsApp messages, many of a very confidential nature.

Ms Oakeshott signed a Non Disclosure Agreement before starting on the book but this did not stop her, job done, from passing these messages on to a national newspaper, and very embarrassing for Mr Hancock they have proved. Nor have they done her reputation as a hard-hitting, scoop-winning journalist any harm, though I would be surprised if she gets many more ghostwriting requests.

(Incidentally, NDAs are actually pretty toothless in law. There’s a piece on what the law actually says about them here, and it's not so clear-cut as you (or Mr Hancock) might have thought.)

For me, this is one of those awkward moments sent to test us: a reminder that a principle is a principle, and it applies even if you yourself are inconvenienced by it.

On the one hand: as she said when interviewed on the Today programme, she was hired to ghostwrite a book. This she duly did. Job done. Then she leaked the messages. And if she had uncovered evidence of a crime, say, or received a court order that overrode the NDA, there would be no question that releasing them was the right thing to do. And that information had already been made publicly available so she didn’t actually …

No. You know what, forget it. I’m not going to rehash the arguments. Here’s the thing that makes me angry and ranty and possibly judgemental (forgive me). She signed an NDA. Forget what the law does or does not say. She said she wouldn’t do something, which she then did. She made the unilateral decision that she was justified in tearing up the NDA. She broke her word.

I’ve signed NDAs myself, simply because it keeps the client happy, and even if they have the legal strength of tissue paper, they do have value in setting out precisely what your work covers. But I like to think I would never actually need to sign anything because Jesus was very clear about letting your spoken ‘yes’ mean yes and your ‘no’ mean no: “anything beyond this comes from the evil one.”

Of course, to have any right to criticise, I must be able to say what I would have done different, or better. Say I was helping a client and, informed by what I learnt, came to certain conclusions that they wanted hidden but which I thought the world needed to know?

Ouch. It’s a tough one. If I learnt of anything illegal then I do think it would be appropriate to spill the beans. The NDA would not have been presented in good faith by the client; the breach of trust was theirs in the first place. But say it was nothing illegal, just important?

Ultimately, if I was really unhappy with a job, the most I suppose I could do would be to walk away from it. It would be difficult, it might be financially punitive, but perhaps that would be the right thing to do. And then I would keep quiet about it, because I had said that I would. And trust that God would see it right.

God give me grace, that is what I think and hope I would do.

Being a Christian isn’t always easy, is it?

Ben Jeapes took up writing in the mistaken belief that it would be easier than a real job (it isn’t). Hence, as well as being the author of eight novels and co-author of many more, he has also been a journal editor, book publisher, and technical writer. His most recent title is a children’s biography of Ada Lovelace. www.benjeapes.com