The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism

by Peter Oborne

Treating all politicians as liars is a gift to the ones who are. It induces cynicism and political apathy, on which they thrive.

I have never encountered a senior British politician who lies and fabricates so regularly, so shamelessly and so systematically as Boris Johnson.

Jeremy Corbyn did not threaten anyone with imprisonment, starvation or execution. At most, he intended to reduce Britain’s billionaires to the status of multi-millionaires by taxation. To compare this to the persecution of the kulaks was to trash history and language, and insult all of Stalin’s victims. Johnson’s inflammatory falsehood was emblazoned in large bold type over the front page of the Daily Telegraph. This is one of many examples of mainstream media complicity in amplifying Johnson’s lies and falsehoods,

There is irrefutable evidence that Conservative Party lies and distortions in the 2019 election were cynical, systematic and prepared in advance. Johnson’s Conservatives deliberately set out to lie and to cheat their way to victory. The strategy triumphed.

Not so Boris Johnson. As a liar he cannot be compared to Tony Blair. He has never needed a noble justification for lying. He lies habitually, with impunity, and without conscience. This puts his dishonesty into the same category as Donald Trump’s. Although far below Trump’s in scale and stridency, it is epic by British standards.

his most-remembered achievement, the so-called Boris bikes, was actually a legacy from Ken Livingstone).

The unhappy fact that a fabricator and cheat controls the destiny of Britain raises deep, troublesome questions that go way beyond the moral character of Boris Johnson. What happened to the British? How on earth did we vote for him? These questions have nagged away at me while I have been writing this book.

At the heart of the new politics is the nightmare assumption that emotion is more important than thought. This dangerous insight lies at the heart of the politics of Johnson and Trump.

Donald Trump won votes when he promised to ‘drain the swamp’. (Promises unkept: Trump’s administration, like Johnson’s, handsomely rewarded its donors.)

Nobody would tolerate this level of deceit in a friend, a colleague, an employer or a spouse. Yet Johnson’s lying has been facilitated and, in many cases, actively defended, by MPs, the Conservative Party itself, allies in the press – and by millions of voters.