How did UK politics reach this low point?

Posted on December 4 2020

I am not the first person to note that government ministers were lying through their back teeth about the benefits of Brexit yesterday. On this occasion the BBC has called them out. Things must be bad:

I support the call many have made on Twitter for the Tweets of UK government ministers to be marked as being of questionable truthfulness, in the way that many of Donald Trump's have been.

I also believe that in any normal circumstance the ministers would be expected to resign for telling blatant falsehoods. But these are not normal times.

At least there appeared to be widespread agreement that Gavin Williamson made a complete fool of himself on LBC when claiming the UK had authorised the vaccine first because we were a better country than all the rest.

But this is serious. If coronavirus is bad, I believe Brexit will be worse, if not in terms of deaths caused (although even that is possible). That means we are dependent upon these fools.

The only good news is that the country has noticed:

As that polling shows, Labour would at this moment take back almost  all the Red Wall seats that it lost in 2019, such is the scale of disenchantment with Tory performance, except on economics. And wait for Brexit to solve that.

We have all been taken for fools by people who do not care if they tell the truth or lie.

How did it come to this?

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10 Responses

  1. Andrew says:
    December 4 2020 at 9:05 am

    Politicians have always lied where expedient for political gain. What is so extraordinary about our times is that there seems to be no consequence for being caught out in a lie, and the reaction is often to double down on the lie (perhaps by accusing the opponent of lying in return – “fake news”, “fraud”, whatever). As if the difference between truth and lies no longer matters: all that is important is broadcasting propaganda to the faithful.

    It is very simple. Can Mr Hancock (i) identify the regulation that was changed, and (ii) explain how that change made the UK regulatory approval any quicker. (The first should clarify what he was referring to, but on the second, I have not heard anyone identify any relevant change had any impact on the timing. Frankly it is not correct. The regulations are published online. You can check for yourself.)

    It was rather shocking to see how the point was mishandled by Question Time last night. No one called it out as clearly incorrect. Some panellists evaded the question to make other points, some actually stated it was true. It isn’t, and no one corrected them.

    At one point I thought Mr Hancock was one of the better ones, honestly trying to do the best he could in a bad situation. After the last nine months I am sorry to say I no longer trust him.

    How can the EU make any kind of agreement with this gang?

  2. CLIVE PARRY says:
    December 4 2020 at 9:41 am

    If I had a pound for each time our political life hit a low point I would be a rich man.
    Very depressing.

  3. Bill Hughes says:
    December 4 2020 at 11:00 am

    The Tories are getting desperate to divert attention from the imminent Brexit chaos due on 1st January when Type 1 diabetics and others whose lives depend upon a daily supply of insulin or other drugs will be worrying about their very survival. Also the supply of fresh fruit and vegetables and other food from the continent could be disrupted let alone the yet unkown regulations, paperwork, tariffs etc that all freight companies, importers and exporters face and lorries are held up in flooded lorry parks and loo-less motorways. Any straws the Tories can clutch such as beating the nationalistic drum and flag waving will rise to a crescendo . We aint seen nothing yet………………..

    • Bill Kruse says:
      December 4 2020 at 2:14 pm

      I’m hearing it suggested more and more such goods simply won’t be coming here. They won’t be manufactured or grown with the UK in mind as getting them here will prove so time-consuming and expensive people, haulage companies and their self-employed drivers especially, won’t want to do it. We’ll still be getting white goods from Asia on container ships but the roro trade just won’t be there any more, and after a time neither, I imagine, will the ferries.

    • Rob says:
      December 4 2020 at 3:32 pm

      Another online clip from LBC adds detail here. The owner of an international freight forwarding company remarks how continental drivers, paid by the mile/Km, will avoid being tied up in queues by simply not coming to the UK.

      https://twitter.com/LBC/status/1334437937904279558

  4. Rob says:
    December 4 2020 at 3:27 pm

    The rot set in long ago. Back in the early 90s I worked a while in Czechoslovakia and became very careful about picking my words. So I noticed when hearing John Major on the World Service, speaking in Parliament. It struck me that he was saying “fact” when he should have said allegation, suggestion, theory, or some such. It may have eased his burden of truth telling to Parliament, but it sounded then like a bad way to go.

    Sorry if I’m edging off topic, but I found this enlightening…
    https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/you-have-misunderstood-the-threat-to-liberal-democracy-trump-brexit-rafael-behr

  5. Robin Stafford says:
    December 5 2020 at 5:52 pm

    It’s perhaps too easy to slide into the generalisation that ‘all politicians lie, are corrupt etc’, which almost legitimises the current gang.
    Listening to David Dimbleby interviewed by Krishnan Guru Murty (a good podcast for interviews) Dimbleby was scathing about this being easily the worst in all his 40 year career. Mediocre and incompetent
    It is – and even today let’s recognise there are some decent politicians, even ones we don’t necessarily agree with.