Political Lies - Inconvenient Truths

It’s an old complaint, wheeled out like clockwork every election – "Politicians lie! They say one thing before the vote, then do another once they’re in!" And yes, of course they do. It’s practically in the job description. But here’s the rub – if they told the unvarnished truth, none of them would get elected in the first place.

Imagine, just for a moment, a political leader standing at the podium, straight-backed, full of conviction, looking the electorate dead in the eye and saying: "Look, the economy’s a mess. Public services are hanging on by a thread. We’ll have to raise taxes to fix it, and no, not just on the billionaires – on you too. No, growth isn’t going to solve it overnight. Yes, you’ll have to tighten your belt before things get better. And no, I can’t promise it’ll all be fine in five years, because we’ve inherited decades of economic vandalism. But it’s either this, or we carry on with smoke and mirrors until the whole thing implodes." That’s the truth. But that’s also the end of their campaign, because the electorate would scatter like pigeons at a firework display.

People say they want honesty, but they don’t. What they want is comforting fictions. They want to believe that there’s a magic bullet – that ‘efficiencies’ and cutting ‘waste’ can somehow save billions without anyone noticing. That someone else, somewhere else, will foot the bill. That they can have world-class services without paying for them. That all of our economic woes are down to a handful of lazy bureaucrats or scheming foreigners rather than structural issues going back decades. And politicians, knowing this, feed them exactly what they want to hear. Because the only alternative is political oblivion.

It’s no coincidence that the most electorally successful liars tend to be those who promise the moon while conveniently ignoring gravity. Brexit was a masterclass – billions for the NHS, sovereignty on tap, trade deals raining from the sky – all utterly fictitious, but lapped up by an electorate desperate for a shortcut to utopia. Likewise, the Tories in 2019 peddled the fantasy that they could ‘level up’ the country without taxing the rich or overhauling the system. Labour, for their part, are now trapped in the same game – avoiding the ‘T’ word like it’s a live grenade, pretending they can rebuild the economy without making anyone feel the pinch. Because the moment they say the quiet part out loud – that everyone, yes everyone, will have to contribute – their poll numbers take a nosedive.

This isn’t new. History is littered with examples of leaders selling fantasy to the masses, only to leave reality to clean up the mess. Napoleon promised a glorious, revitalised France before leading his country into ruin. The Weimar Republic politicians sugar-coated Germany’s post-WWI predicament, paving the way for more radical and dishonest leaders to exploit popular discontent. Even Roosevelt, hailed as a hero, knew he had to sell the New Deal as a hopeful, grand project, glossing over the immense sacrifices required. The American Vietnam War effort was built on layers of dishonesty, from the Gulf of Tonkin incident to Nixon’s secret bombings. The pattern is eternal – lie convincingly, win power, then hope you can bend reality to match your fiction before the cracks show.

And when those cracks do show, what’s the standard move? Hope that something – anything – swoops in to save the day before their term is up. A Deus ex Machina in the form of an economic boom, a sudden technological breakthrough, or a geopolitical shift that miraculously makes all the promises seem plausible in hindsight. Failing that, they’ll kick the can down the road for the next lot to deal with, all while pleading for ‘more time’ or ‘understanding of the difficult circumstances’ – anything to delay the inevitable reckoning.

And then there’s the distinction between democratic lies and populist lies. The former is a careful balancing act – a mix of pragmatism and self-preservation, where leaders stretch the truth just enough to get through the next election cycle without torching their credibility. The latter is a reckless con job, where a leader promises absolutely everything to absolutely everyone, knowing full well they’ll never deliver a fraction of it. Democratic lies are about staying in power by managing expectations. Populist lies are about grabbing power by smashing expectations into dust and hoping nobody notices until it’s too late.

The real trick of the populists, though, is convincing people that "they’re all the same – except us." That while the traditional politicians are all self-serving liars, they alone are the voice of the people, the righteous crusaders against the corrupt establishment. It’s nonsense, of course. Populists lie just as much – if not more – than their mainstream counterparts, but they do it with a wink and a sneer, making their supporters feel like insiders on some grand, rebellious truth. They create an ‘us versus them’ narrative so potent that even when they fail – and they inevitably do – their followers blame shadowy elites, the media, or political enemies rather than admitting they were conned.

And here’s where the Deep State conspiracy theory conveniently steps in. When populists inevitably fail to deliver on their extravagant promises, they don’t own up to their deceit – they blame the ‘Deep State,’ an imaginary cabal of bureaucrats, intelligence agencies, and shadowy elites supposedly conspiring to undermine them. It’s the perfect deflection. Instead of admitting their policies were unrealistic from the start, they whip up paranoia, insisting that they were thwarted by an invisible enemy rather than their own incompetence. It’s a lie so brazen yet so effective that even after their populist heroes are caught red-handed, their followers continue to believe they were victims of a grand conspiracy.

And let’s not forget the media’s role in all this. Rather than challenging the falsehoods, sections of the press amplify them, either out of ideological alignment or sheer opportunism. Outrage sells, and a sensationalist narrative of corrupt elites versus heroic ‘truth-tellers’ is far more lucrative than a dull, sober analysis of reality. Whether it’s through relentless fear-mongering, selective reporting, or outright misinformation, media outlets play their part in perpetuating the very lies they later pretend to expose.

Of course, history offers a few cases of leaders who tried honesty and paid the price. Jimmy Carter’s infamous ‘malaise’ speech, where he told Americans they needed to curb their consumption and rethink their expectations, was met with hostility – and he lost the next election in a landslide. Voters don’t reward brutal truth; they punish it.

And the real irony? The public knows they’re being lied to, but they rationalise it. "All politicians lie, but ours lie less" or "they have to lie to get things done." It’s a self-deception as deep as the political lies themselves, ensuring the cycle continues.

So the next time someone moans about lying politicians, ask them what they’d actually do if a candidate came out and told the whole grim truth. Would they reward that honesty with their vote? Or would they scurry off to find someone peddling a more palatable fantasy? Because as long as voters prefer comforting lies to uncomfortable truths, politicians will keep lying. And we’ll keep pretending to be shocked when they do.