“I have been a political reporter for almost three decades,” writes Peter Oborne in his new book, “and I have never encountered a senior British politician who lies and fabricates so regularly, so shamelessly and so systematically as Boris Johnson.”
The Assault on Truth - more like a slim dossier with full supporting evidence - attempts to explain the current apparently shambolic state of UK politics, and how Johnson has turned it against itself as he seeks to divide and rule.
In the first part, Oborne uses a mass of irrefutable evidence to prove that Johnson (and most of his senior advisors and ministers) habitually lie, fabricate and misrepresent the facts.
Having built the case, seemingly rather easily it turns out, he examines Johnson’s methodology of deception by selecting some of the most powerful and shocking examples.
Oborne then attempts to answer the question, what led the Conservative party to install such a person as leader and the British people to put an already proven liar in Downing Street?
He suggests that morality in public life (an by inference perhaps society at large too) has changed in recent years, over-turning the protections against deceit and corruption instilled by our Victorian ancestors, many inspired by evangelical Christianity.
“It may be fashionable to mock them today, but the Victorians brought high ideals into government which changed the way that Britain was ruled,” he writes.
Oborne also claims - and he should know, having worked on both the Telegraph and Spectator (the latter under Johnson as editor) - that “a great deal of political journalism has become the putrid face of a corrupt government” flying in the face of the only valid reason to become a journalist, which is “to tell the truth”.
He writes: “Too much of the political class have merged. And this unnatural amalgamation has converted truth into falsehood, while lies have become truth.”
Much of the documented evidence in The Assault on Truth is both difficult to deny (although it has become the duty of Johnson’s ministers daily to defend the indefensible) and shocking at the same time.
With forensic dissection, Oborne notes the small and large steps along the twisting path of 21st century politics to the place we have sadly arrived at today, where lies and trite, three-word slogans rule over difficult or politically complex areas.
Johnson is presented as an ambitious, self-seeking politician whose campaigning exuberance and populist comic polemic character is gradually being undermined by “incompetence and dishonesty in high office”.
But while there is little doubt that Johnson is both deceitful and amoral, Oborne says the prime minister’s war on truth is also part of a wider, largely right-wing, attack on the pillars of democracy, which includes Parliament, the rule of law and the civil service.
Oborne is honest enough to admit that he has changed his own mind on Brexit since voting for it in the 2016 referendum. Given his calibre as a journalist and his lifelong pursuit of the truth the only surprise in this is that he did not see through the blatant lies of the Vote Leave campaign at the time.
Perhaps the most disturbing thing in this book is not that Johnson is a habitual liar (though that is bad enough) but that, as a society, the UK has been prepared to protect (via the media) and support (by the public) him and his government in it.
Ultimately, the consequences of allowing such political trickery and wickedness to go unchallenged and unchecked for so long are grave indeed.
The Assault on Truth - Peter Oborne (2021)
Best purchased from your local, independent bookshop.
