Don’t ban political lying

I hate liars. Of course, like everyone, I hate liars whose lies are inconvenient to me more than I hate liars whose lies are appealing or effective. But I really do my best to disdain all lies, whatever the ugliness or attractiveness of their packaging. (If nothing else, no one wants to be a sucker.)

Before Boris Johnson became PM, for example, I criticised his “cheerfully indifferent stance towards the truth”, and how “the bright facetious facade … [shielded] a calculating and dishonest political animal”. His years in Number 10 did nothing to change my mind.

So, I should be somewhat attracted to calls to ban political lying. Neal Lawson, boss of the left-wing think tank Compass, declares that such a move would change politics in Britain:

All of a sudden, the best in our politicians could find its voice, not to win by destroying your opponent but by demonstrating a vision of realistic hope. People could still debate and disagree strongly but not in ways that polarised and shrunk the space to listen, learn, adapt and grow. 

Cancer would be cured. Vladimir Putin would end the war in Ukraine and lock himself in a prison cell. The lion would lie down with the lamb. 

This is embarrassing utopianism, of course, and symptomatic of the failure of leftist thinkers to appreciate that people have genuine moral and epistemological disagreements. Hardly anyone, for many of them, has genuinely different values and theories to theirs. They have just been hoodwinked by a cabal of Tories, tech bros and Russian bots. Ban lying and everyone would realise — as if emerging from a cave into the sunlight — that Net Zero, supranationalism and citizens’ assemblies are fabulous ideas.

The fact is that “polarisation” — itself exaggerated as a political reality in the UK — is not reducible to truth versus lies. It can be, of course. But it can also involve competing ideas that both have plausible claims to epistemic validity. It can also involve different moral values and societal aspirations, which contain an element — if not more than an element — of subjectivity. Does Lawson appreciate that honest disagreement is even possible?

But what about the idea itself? It has gained a lot of currency. As Lawson writes:

The Welsh parliament have already committed to passing a bill banning politicians from lying and polling shows the public back it.  

Well, if the famously effective Welsh Parliament backs the idea, who could disagree?

In all seriousness, there are certainly too many lies in politics.  There is no defending them.  (Some of them, indeed, are illegal, such as on the grounds of libellousness.) But what counts as a lie is a tricky question. The Welsh Parliament intends to target “deliberate deception”, which would be assessed “through an independent judicial process”. But even assuming that this process would be genuinely independent and objective — perhaps overgenerous — I’m sceptical about the extent to which “deliberate deception” can be diagnosed. Theoretically, one could find proof that someone knew that they were lying — a WhatsApp message that said “SUCKERS!”, for example — but such evidence is difficult to find. My suspicion is that “political lying” would be subject to the same concept creep as “disinformation”. “Lying” would not actually mean deliberate deception but advocacy for unfashionable ideas. In February 2020, for example, it could have been applied to claims that people should wear masks to protect themselves against COVID-19. In April 2020, meanwhile, it could have been applied to claims that masks do not protect people against COVID-19.

More prosaically, it seems difficult to believe that such a law would be applied independently and objectively. Like Mr Lawson, I think Boris Johnson had an unfaithful relationship with the truth. But would Lawson apply his contempt for “political lying” to the tireless and prolific inconsistency of Prime Minister Keir Starmer — a man who changes his opinions as frequently and randomly as most of us change socks.

I admit that it would be difficult. One cannot prove that Starmer was lying when he praised his “colleague” and “friend” Jeremy Corbyn, for example, only to assert soon afterwards that he would not even wave across the street at him. It would be hard to show beyond reasonable doubt that he did not change his mind. Yet this just illustrates that a ban on strictly demonstrable lies would not transform a culture of political dishonesty. Disingenuousness is much deeper and more invasive than provably bogus and deceptive fact claims.

A ban on political lying, then, would be toothless if applied rigorously and dangerous to the point of being outright totalitarian if applied sloppily or opportunistically.

Sorry, Mr Lawson. Those visions of CompassWorld might have to wait. Perhaps I’ll see you one day in the great citizens’ assembly in the sky.