Andreas Whittam Smith: Lying has become a way of life for our politicians
In their hearts, I believe, they are contemptuous of ordinary people
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Independent Minds
On Wednesday, David Cameron, the leader of the Opposition, repeated his charge that a "thread of dishonesty" runs through Mr Brown's leadership. Yet dishonesty has always been part of the warp and weft of politics. More than 2,000 years ago, Plato observed that it will be for the rulers of the city "to use falsehood in dealing with the citizenry or enemy for the good of the state". "No one else must do so", he added.
Even if you accept this notion that the state may, so to speak, lie for our benefit, which I don't, the philospher's injunction has provided an excuse for generations of political leaders and their officials to plead reason of state for every species of chicanery imaginable.
During John Major's administration, for instance, the Scott Inquiry into the supply of British arms to Iraq revealed a secretive government, riddled with incompetence, slippery with the truth and willing to mislead Parliament. Government ministers at the time claimed that all that was done was done "in the public interest".
It was done to save their skins, as Tony Blair's observation, unearthed by Peter Oborne, in his book The Rise of Political Lying, makes plain. In 1987 Mr Blair said: "The truth becomes almost impossible to communicate because total frankness, relayed in the shorthand of the mass media, becomes simply a weapon in the hands of opponents." In other words, you daren't tell the truth because it will be used against you. This won't do either. Lance Price's account of working for Mr. Blair in Downing Street (The Spin Doctor's Diary) shows where this analysis leads. He recounts that he had only been in the job five days when the question of the legal problems of the former Leader of Westminster Council, Lady Porter, came up. "No concern in No 10", he was instructed to say to media inquirers, and adds: "Perhaps my first exercise in less than 100 per cent veracity."
Three months later Mr Price records that Gerhard Schroder, the German Chancellor, had snubbed New Labour. The Prime Minister had personally invited him to come to the Labour Party Conference. But he's gone to Paris instead, Mr Price wrote in his diary that evening, "so we lied and said we hadn't invited him".
The question is whether dishonesty is becoming more than just a thread and is now colouring the entire fabric of British political life. A scene comes to my mind. It is Mr Blair's triumphant arrival in Downing Street on the morrow of his first election victory. Excited crowds are waving flags. What popular joy!
Except, as we learnt later, these weren't ordinary people at all. They were party workers brought in especially for the purpose of scene setting. It was a deception, mild indeed, but nonetheless designed to mislead television viewers. That has been the pattern ever since.
The Government's habit of double counting its achievements is a good example. Referring to one of Jack Straw's announcements as Home Secretary, a fellow Labour MP remarked: "Jack Straw has been in a bit of trouble over seeming to claim that we were providing 5,000 extra police officers when all we're actually doing is stabilising police numbers".
The same Jack Straw confessed to over-claiming parliamentary expenses to cover council tax for four years. By applying for a 50 per cent "zero occupancy" discount the bill for his constituency home in Blackburn and claiming the full amount on expenses, Mr Straw received more than £1,500 to which he was not entitled.
This is the thread of dishonesty: bogus police numbers, bogus expenses claims followed, as we shall see, by bogus contrition. For even the letters that Labour MPs started writing to party workers to apologise for the parliamentary expenses scandals were a deception. "I thought twice about sending this letter because I know how rightly angry people are." From the heart! Except that party headquarters had drafted the letters. Labour MPs had only to fill in the recipient's name and add their signature.
Why does deceit come so easily to quite a few members of Parliament, to numerous party professionals and, it must be added, to some civil servants, too? Because in their hearts, I believe, they are contemptuous of ordinary people.
New Labour once held a "Listening to Old People" event in London. Ministers came to speak. But no questions were allowed. "Ministers are busy people", the audience was told, "we should all be grateful that they found time to grace us with their presence." Your role and mine, then? To be stage-managed and deceived as necessary.
a.whittamsmith@independent.co.uk
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Comments
Politicians want everyone to love them all the time but also whats the point of being in high office unless you start seeing some benefits, monetary or otherwise.
But I don't suppose the Independent would print that as a headline.
Still.... I agree with all that W-S has written.
Plato hated the direct and real democracy of Athens and his ideas about lying are ones not about democracy but about denying democracy. Andreas Whittam Smith should read up his Sir Karl Popper and "The open society and its enemies".
External checks and balances include professional bodies, political opponents, their own party members or the media.
Other countries in Europe, for example in Scandanavia, Switzerland or the Netherlands have a more open political culture and debate is based more upon the underlying issues rather than the hype, spin and deception that so often pass for informed comment in the UK.
The 'free press' have traditionally been involved in holding powerful individuals to account in the UK but have abandoned this role since 1997 and become clients of "The Political Class" as Peter Oborne has also pointed out. By allowing themselves to be seduced in this fashion, the press have become complicit in the deceptions foisted on the public rather than remaining independent.
It became extreme with Thatcher and has continued throughout successive Premierships since.
But who do we vote for when the policies of all are so similar.
The ideology is My Power, My Money. The good governance of the country is secondary.
Even to say our poiticians have 'feet of clay' is a misnomer for excusing rank decpetion, may ungarnished lies, trweatinf the electorate as fools with half a brain.
The last few months have opened up a chasm of truth, which is that few of them are to be trusted, along with a system that protects MPs and their ilk. So where does that leave us who cast the votes in the first place.
We have a responsibilty to axamine and question opur politicians and not leave it all to them to do what they will. Is it not time to take up our part of the equation of the practice of dojmocarcy, ( if there is any such thing)and demand honesty, which takesd effort. Ploiticians lie partly because we allow ourselves to be fobbed off, with terms such as this much banded about work; 'transparicy'. Time to do the work and get involved.
Note: Iraq--and the UK's subsequent contempt, in the world's eyes--one of many such incidence, I know, but all leads to mistrust and chaos. When it becomes the general currency of our leaders, it loses all value and we stop trading.
Lawyers have become weavers of words in the US and Britain--it is no surprise that the UK Parliament comprises so many to inveigle people with their nefarious schemes.
The man in the bar, or barrack room lawyers, who say, referring to politicians: "they are all a bunch of liars", become as wise, as the most learned QC.
Call it an untruth, call it anything but not what it is. Public schoolboy word games, or lawyer-speak, which is, it seems, is transferred into the schoolboy world of Westminster. I agree wholeheartedly that politicians are contemptuous of most of us. Take the wonderfully kind, considerate MP like Tony Banks. He seems to have become very jaded over the years about the type of work he was expected to do for constituents. I am convinced that is how most of them feel. That is why they employ staff to do the hum-drum, daily grind of casework. This consists of sorting out the nightmare of wrongly credited tax-credits for families or Mrs Smith's over-flowing drain which the Council won't fix. MPs want to be listened to, preferably on TV or radio. They do not want to spend time with a "nobody" unless it is voting time. Show business for ugly people.
I would vote for a demonstrably honest politician. Pity there aren't any, honesty is specifically excluded from the job description. What I would really like to know is, when did money first become the only object of socialists? That was when the whole political system went to pot. Now on one side we have money-grubbing tories, and on the other side - Err what was supposed to be the difference?
And in part those mainstream politicians are right, because of course there's emotion in the public response, and some of the citizens who give thought to these things appear not have arrived at a real and settled intellectual awareness of the moral barrenness of so much of our political landscape. If that were not the case, no one would be seriously suggesting the likelihood of a Conservative victory next year. I find Peter Hitchens fairly indigestible for a good deal of the time, but he summed this point up neatly in last night "Question Time" on BBC1 when he said that we are in danger of just doing the classic swap from Tweedledum to Tweedledumber.
Until that real and settled awareness is clearly present, Andreas Whttam Smith's point, bleedin' obvious though it is, needs to be repeated again and again. One of the reasons why more people voted BNP or UKIP this time in the Euro elections was surely an expression of fury, contempt and frustration. I doubt it was, in most instances, a settled and calculated choice. I'd have joined them myself if I wasn't convinced that swapping the devil for the deep blue sea was no real option, so I went, fruitlessly, for Declan Ganley's "Libertas".
But if the electorate decides next year to respond to recent events merely by voting the Tories into power, no moulds will be broken, and the only outcome will be that business as usual will swiftly resume in the Westminster corridors of power. And surely by now we know what that will mean. So Whittam Smith and others with access to the media need to keep saying what needs to be said, in the hope that electors will get beyond mere anger, and see, rationally, that British political structures are thoroughly rotten and need radical change, which neither Tories nor Labour, infected as they are by that rottenness, can nor will provide.
The British people have been utterly screwed over. I used to think that there was a bit of fiddling, as there is everywhere, but it was only a few people and didn't amount to much. What a mug I am. This rancid collection of corrupt, squalid, greedy scum are laughing all the way to the bank on the backs of people who work for a living, the 'little people' whom they obviously have so much contempt for.
How we organise things is to link political events too closely to the politicians involved, which therefore inadvertently rewards delay and deception; because this is the way, in our short attention span world, that the bad effects of adverse outcomes upon political careers can be mitigated. What is missing is a forum where the views of ordinary citizens, politicians and interested parties can be expressed.
Then the media focus would not be on the political protagonists but the issues (eg penal policy)
Here are some suggestions.
No politician should serve more than three terms in any post.
No politician should be elected to more than one role at a time.
No politician should be allowed to ever take a job with any company they gave a contract to.
A Financial statement should be published before each election, giving the state of the finances in short, simple language.