Those who lie for a purpose

The recent admission by Sir Malcom Bruce that our MPs are liars is unlikely to be a surprise to anyone over the age of ten.

Asked on BBC Radio 4 whether he was alleging that lying was widespread in public life, Bruce, who stood down at the election, replied: “No, well, yes. Lots of people have told lies and you know perfectly well that to be true.”

He suggested MPs could not be excluded for telling a lie: “If you are suggesting every MP who has never quite told the truth or even told a brazen lie, including cabinet ministers, including prime ministers, we would clear out the House of Commons very fast, I would suggest,” he said.

Not a particularly significant admission one might assume. Yet sometimes political comments stick around to become public facts, absorbed into the swirling network of narratives which make up public discourse.

Official lying has become a fact of life, but we knew that anyway. However if our presumption that they lie to us were to become a necessary fact of political life and therefore necessary input into the narratives, then political life would have to change.

On the other hand, we knew about the lying but still voted for them in our millions in the recent general election. What does that say about us?