Compare Brexit lies to the MMR panic and something becomes very clear

The consequences of the confected vaccine controversy shows politicians that a poisonous legacy of lies won’t just go away

After the events of yesterday how can we believe a word that either this government, or its sad sack prime minister, says again?

Weekend reports of a delay to the vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal were repeatedly denied, which was reaffirmed at the Westminster media briefing at 11.07am on Monday. Some 23 minutes later the vote was canned.

Yet more mendacity followed as the government of Great Britain and Northern Ireland belched forth claims that democracy is somehow denied by giving the people a democratic vote, and the prime minister claimed that the only alternative to no deal was her deal.

She was outdone only by the Brexiteer loons, to whom she has repeatedly kow-towed. They did what they always do, spraying deceit around the country like a phalanx of crop-dusting aeroplanes.

Decidedly undemocratic threats of violence were tabled in some quarters.

Amid the chaos it’s perhaps unsurprising that no one was giving a great deal of thought to the long-term impact of the pork pies cooked up in Number 10 kitchens, and those of the surrounding Whitehall departments.

But there will be consequences. Recall, if you will, the fuss over the MMR vaccine.

This superlative treatment prevents children from getting three nasty and potentially life-changing conditions: measles, mumps and rubella. Not only can the first of those cause blindness, it is life-threatening too. Government figures record more than 150 deaths from it between 1980 and 2016.

The MMR controversy was created following publication of a paper co-authored by a doctor by the name of Andrew Wakefield, which claimed a possible link between the vaccine and autism.

The number of cases studied was small, there was no control group, and it was heavily reliant upon parental recollection. Over the following decade it was brutally exposed. A series of follow-up studies found no evidence whatsoever for its conclusions. Wakefield, meanwhile, was exposed as a quack and a fraud and was struck off the medical register before disappearing off to America. Channel Four has screened some frankly disturbing footage of what he’s been getting up to there.

The government’s advice as it pertains to MMR represents simple common sense: It’s a first-rate treatment. It’s safe. You should get your child vaccinated. I found a rather good top 10 myths and top 10 truths about the MMR vaccine put together by the NHS that reinforces those points. I would strongly recommend it to anyone with concerns.

The problem is that if sufficient numbers of people don’t believe the government’s advice, then you have created a real problem.

Vaccinations are not fail-safes. Yes, they confer resistance to diseases to people who’ve been vaccinated. But to successfully protect a population you need to ensure everyone gets vaccinated so that it benefits from what’s called “herd immunity”. The MMR scare threatened this and thus the effectiveness of the treatment.

There will always be people around who are prepared to be believe arrant nonsense even when the authorities are telling the truth: conspiracy theorists, whackos, Donald J Trump. You know the type.

But the number of people susceptible to the sort of bullshit spun by likes of Wakefield can only be increased when the government repeatedly lies about other things. That bullshit has become terribly easy to spread courtesy of the internet.

You’ll tell me at this point that politicians have always lied. Only up to a point.

It’s true that they frequently obfuscate, indulge in spin, utter half-truths. This is particularly true of ministers, who are bound by collective responsibility to defend government decisions with which they may not entirely agree. But blatant falsehoods? I don’t think they were quite as common as people sometimes believe, at least not until recently. That’s partly because of the risks, and the consequences, of exposure.

The advent of Trump, Boris Johnson’s enthusiastic performance as his plummy toned mini-me and the conduct of the Leave campaign, have contributed to a disturbing paradigm shift. They have proved that you can get away with it and as a result, lies now proliferate like maggots in dead meat. They are responsible for infusing corruption into the British body politic.

Sadly, the media has helped the process on its way, whether through newspaper cheerleading for the likes of Johnson, or broadcasters’ failure to properly confront those guilty of falsehood. We also have to suffer through the false equivalence accorded to the purveyors of fiction when set against the purveyors of fact in the shouting matches news programmes favour. The BBC is particularly at fault in the latter case.

It needs to stop, not only because it is immoral, despicable and flat out wrong, but because of the potential consequences.

Wakefield did tremendous damage with his “work” and the effect of it still lingers. It should serve as a cautionary tale. It seems Westminster and Whitehall haven’t been paying attention.

So, a question for the more thoughtful politicians, those who actually care about their country: what happens the next time some quack decides to have a go at a vaccine?

What happens the next time government scientists try to warn against bad evidence, when they try to say with good reason that something, maybe the bonkers craze for drinking untreated “raw” water, is flat out dangerous and bloody silly?