Truth has been the first casualty of Britain’s election

WINSTON CHURCHILL once said that “in wartime truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” If Britain’s election is anything to go by, these days lies are so precious that they need to be attended by a bodyguard of further lies. This election has been marinated in mendacity: big lies and small lies; quarter truths and pseudo-facts; distortion, dissembling and disinformation; and digital skulduggery on an industrial scale. The public is so disillusioned with the political process that, when a member of the public asked Boris Johnson during a televised debate whether he valued truth, the audience burst into laughter. Mr Johnson is the favourite by a substantial margin.

A popular parlour game in political circles is to debate which party is the biggest liar. The answer is that the Tories are probably the worst offenders and the Liberal Democrats probably the least bad, though they have a troubling habit of producing fake local newspapers. But this misses the larger point: that both the main contenders have turned disinformation into an art. They both start with big lies—the Tories that Brexit can be delivered quickly and painlessly, and Labour that its gigantic spending plans can be funded by a handful of billionaires (who anyway got rich by stealing from the poor). They then reinforce big lies with smaller ones. The Tories claim they are building 40 new hospitals. Labour insists the Tories are planning to privatise the National Health Service.