Inflicting harm for harm's sake is anathema to human nature. We recoil from people who relish causing deliberate but needless pain. Small children who toy with defenceless creatures in the garden are taught not to, or learn not to let their curiosity and their power overcome their better nature. Those children who continue to do so are looked at warily, with the anxious suspicion that their willingness to inflict pain on another creature is a sign of a moral void.
If we had to guess at people in the public eye who, as children, continued to skulk in the far reaches of the garden, plucking the legs off beetles and peeling the wings from butterflies, politicians would doubtless dominate the list. Characters like Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson, or Suella Braverman and Priti Patel exude callous indifference. It is not difficult to imagine them torturing creatures smaller than them for no reason other than the fact they could.
