The Rise of Political Lying

I'm currently reading The Rise of Political Lying by Peter Oborne, who writes for the Daily Mail. The book starts with Thatcher's cult of personality (lightly, as Oborne is a Tory), moves quickly through Honest John Major and then wades into the Blair administration, which he accuses of turning political lying into an art with spin doctors,

The book was written well before the Tories came back into power and thus misses out the Cameron and May years, including Brexit, which turned the art of political lying into a science.

Oborne is a Brexiteer, as befits a Daily Mail writer, and is considered by many to be the media High Priest of Brexit; however, even he thinks we need to step back and have another referendum as the electorate was plainly ignorant of the EU in 2016.

Here is an extract from the book that's quite pertinent today:

As the Iraq tragedy demonstrates, when politicians lie they change their relationship with the electorate from one of equals to one of master and servant. This applies even from the point of view of has made from virtuous motives. A politician who deceives in order to obtain a higher good is expanding his role beyond its normal and proper sphere. He is stealing the moral autonomy, and the right to choose, of the voter. He is deciding on his own, without a wider consultation, what voters may or may not be told. This means that he is making exceptional demands not merely on others but also on himself. In the long run this can cause as much damage to the lying politician as to those he lies to. The philosopher Sissela Bok writes: "Some come to believe that any lie can be told so long as they can convince themselves that people will be better off in the long run. From there, it is a short step to the conclusion that even if people will not be better off from a particular lie, they will benefit by all manoeuvres to keep the right people in office. Once public servants lose their bearings in this way, all the shabby deceits of Watergate the fake telegrams, the erased tapes, the elaborate cover-ups, the bribing of witnesses to make them lie, the televised pleas for trust become possible."

There's a well known saying - the end justifies the means. It's not always true though, even if the end is noble. The means must also be justified in terms of the end - or at least the aim, as the end is not necessarily guaranteed.

I wonder when we're going to hear of the Dodgy Brexit Dossier.