From Boris Johnson to Donald Trump, leaders who habitually lie win votes by giving people the lies they want
- The rising political fortunes of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson – not to mention the US president, all of whom are no stranger to misleading voters – can only be understood as a product of our times
Electors the world over are happy to vote for a political leader who habitually lies, as long as the whoppers they tell play to our own prejudices. We don’t want any old lies – we want our lies.
In the race to succeed May as Conservative Party leader, Johnson is the favourite not only of the bookmakers but also of the people – well, the Conservative Party’s grass-roots members who will get the final say, after the members of parliament narrow the field by voting through their top two choices.
He either doesn’t know his own mind or he’s lying to one side. But his supporters see what they want to see and ignore what they do not wish to hear.
Lies undermine the pillars of arguments which confront our own. Truth doesn’t matter. You just need a sound bite here and a could-be-true there, plus a baying mob, which the internet age readily delivers.
Type the most unlikely conspiracy theory into Google and you’ll find the validation for it.
I know what you’re thinking: as a journalist, the writer of this article must be as culpable as any politician; they all make it up. Indeed, Britons believe that hairdressers and the “man in the street” are twice as trustworthy as either government ministers or journalists.
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But now I’m going to do something a Trump, a Farage or a Johnson would be loath to do: I’m going to support my arguments with examples and evidence. Evidence of lies, and evidence that people like lies – or, at least, they like a leader who is known to be lying.
Bored with the grey reality emanating from European Union institutions, Johnson made up enough stories for Britons to wrap their fish and chips in, from the supposed plan to standardise the size of coffins within the EU to the establishment of an EU “banana police force” to regulate the shape of the fruit .
Early in his political career, as Conservative Party vice-chairman, Johnson lied to party leader Michael Howard, denying he had had an affair. Afterwards, Johnson refused to resign for lying – and was sacked.
In 2016, Johnson backed the claim, emblazoned on the side of the Brexit campaign bus, that Britain would regain £350 million (US$442 million) a week by leaving the EU. However, more than a year after the UK Statistics Authority described the claim as “misleading”, Johnson repeated it in The Telegraph.
The article has since been removed from the internet. This week, satisfied there is a proper case to answer, a district judge summoned Johnson to court over the issue. There are too many more examples of falsehoods to mention here (and no space to begin to do Farage justice).
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A number of recent studies have found that even when voters are presented with irrefutable evidence that their preferred political leader made specific false contentions, their feelings towards that leader tend to remain unchanged.
Paul Letters is a novelist, journalist and historian. His latest wartime novel, “The Slightest Chance”, is set in and around Hong Kong. See paulletters.com
