Are you saying that you agree with Oborne’s implication that political lying started seriously with NuLabor and that previous British politicians (especially Tory ones) were scrupulously honest? That’s almost as funny as his statement that bankers are truthful beings, and it was carrying this deep adherence to principle over to journalism that authorised him to pass judgment on MPs. It must be difficult for a Tory like Oborne to marry what I am prepared to accept is a dislike of untruthfulness with loyalty to the Cameron, but such partisan contortions don’t serve his central point very well.

Well, Wiggin was exonerated by the PSC, but don’t let facts get in the way of a good smear, eh?

@2

‘Three weeks ago, the Commons Standards and Privileges Committee determined that he had wrongly claimed for his expenses and ordered him to apologise to the House.’

From the Telegraph article. Doesn’t fit my definition of ‘exonerated’ to be honest.

Plus, this blog hasn’t even made a deal out of the Wiggin part of the Telegraph article. It has concentrated squarely on Dorries and Woolas.

‘slams Dorries and Woolas’?

Tha Daily Mail called asking for its Headline-O-Generator back…

@ 2. Martin Coxall:

Going on from the pertinent points made in post 3 above, in some ways the Bill Wiggin case exemplifies the point that Peter Oborne is making: that our political class believe that they are above the law and can behave as they please at our expense.

Anyone else caught with their hand in the till to the tune of several thousand pounds would have been immediately suspended by their employer and, come their disciplinary hearing, they would have been laughed off the premises for using a defence that amounts to “the dog ate my homework.” In all likeliehood their case would then have been passed to the police.

Here we have the stomach-churning spectacle of the Standards & Privileges Committee (staffed by…oh…fellow MPs!) ruling that while Bill Wiggins shouldn’t have claimed this money and that he must apologise to House, he simply got in a muddle and didn’t intend to defraud. This precisely illustrates why MPs cannot be allowed to regulate themselves and explains why so many MPs are having such a hissy fit about IPSA: because it isn’t run by their mates!

Whilst I have no particular qualms with what Oborne is saying on Dorries and Woolas, I do find myself lol-ing at his repeated implication that lying didn’t go on very much amidst the “political class” before 1997.

I mean, really. Is he genuinely that naive, or is this just the hang-over from earlier Tory positioning?

6 – I haven’t read his book so can’t really comment but it would be interesting to see if he addresses this rather obvious point. Perhaps he argues it has become particularly prevalent since 1997, I don’t know.

He’s not saying that lying began with New Labour in 1997, but that New Labour made deception “perfectly normal”. This seems fair, and neither does he say that the Coalition has reversed this situation (quite the opposite in fact).

There has always been political lying. If you examine the way that Britain got into the Boer War you will see lots of parallels with the way it got into the invasion of Iraq. (See Dan HInd’s recent book for more details.)

A few factors have pushed this out into the open.

- The electorate is now better educated and better informed. They expect more from the political class. The political class hasn’t kept up, to say the least.

- The UK is facing a number of long-term strategic choices: can it continue to depend on an economy dominated by the financial sector, on energy supplies largely from oil and on the special relationship with the US? These are tough choices but are being ducked, which leads to sound-bite politics focused on the symptoms not the causes

- New Labour decided that it would focus on winning on elections and dump some principles. That leaves it needing to send conflicting messages to different constituencies, which means a lot of framing of issues and spin.

_ Some sections of Labour’s support have been more willing to call out the party about lies and spin. Oborne is still something of a rarity in the Tory press. As my mother said when he was writing in the Mail, you don’t half have to wade through some terrible spiteful dross to get to the sensible bits.

It’s an issue that has come to a head in the last 10 years, particularly with the issue of the invasion of Iraq (in which the Tories were the past ones to notice Blair’s weasel words). All our political parties need to deal with it pretty quickly.

Whilst I have no particular qualms with what Oborne is saying on Dorries and Woolas, I do find myself lol-ing at his repeated implication that lying didn’t go on very much amidst the “political class” before 1997.

It’s a while since I read the book, but I seem to remember that his point is (and he starts the analysis from 1979) that while pre-1997 Governments, in their official statements, would rely to an extent on suppresio veri and suggestio falsi, they really didn’t tell flat out untruths. (Or at least not often. The two absolute lies that he talks about are Westland and, I think, the Belgrano). By contrast, PMOS under Blair would repeatedly lie to lobby correspondents, newspaper editors and so on.

There’s also a cracking little sequence about Peter Mandelson on the Dome, telling an enthralled House all about the wonderful new game of ‘surfball’ which would feature in the Dome. It was, apparently, a game for the new Millenium, and visitors to the Dome would actually be able to participate. The Dome would “attract people of all ages, although I suspect that playing surfball, the 21st-century sport, will have an especial appeal to young people”.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/surfball-the-millennium-game-thats-virtually-real-1287847.html

Except of course that surfball never existed.

It’s a fun book, though I suspect it’s over-egged. There’s an amusing review from an expert on the subject (Charlie Whelan) here. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3640937/Lies-damned-lies-and-politics.html

Best bit of the review?

This would come under what Oborne calls the Prime Minister’s “artfulness”. I know all about this because as a football nut I was once deputed by Number 10 to find out if another Newcastle legend, Malcolm Macdonald, was playing in the team when Tony Blair was a student so he could say he’d seen him play.

Not that he had seen him play of course, just that it couldn’t be definitely proven that he hadn’t. Those were the good old days…

Surfball, so I didn’t imagine that then.

You think that “we lefties” can broadly agree that the Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party was a fraudster? Nice.

Come, come now, Sunny, You really mustn’t be so coy. Oborne surely isn’t that rare as a Tory beast that you have respect for? You did after all tell us that new Labour was so dreadful on the balance between national security and civil liberties that it was time for brown people to vote Tory. Then, of course, you bigged up Nick Clegg and voted Lib Dem.

“We lefties” tend not to do that sort of thing, I fear.

He should write a piece on Nick Clegg who has become a pathological liar.

@ Sunny,

Oh for goodness sake! Oborne is in a perpetual bate about something or other and it’s usually bonkers. Just because you’re a bit miffed doesn’t suddenly make him your best friend.