Boris Johnson is Britain's most honest politician

Bagehot in The Economist

 

Boris Johnson lies often and easily. It is the hallmark of his career. He was fired from his first job, at the Times, for fabricating a quote. As a condition of becoming editor of the Spectator he promised not to stand as an mp, and then promptly did just that. As a shadow minister, he was fired by Michael Howard for lying about an affair. (He later divorced after a few more.) While mayor of London, he said numerous times that he would not stand in the 2015 election, only to turn up as a candidate in Uxbridge. 

Lying about attending a garden party at Downing Street in May 2020, at the height of lockdown, is just the latest in a very long list. When public anger grew, mps protested with all the sincerity of Captain Renault entering a gambling den in Casablanca. Douglas Ross, a Scottish mp who voted for the prime minister in the Conservative leadership election, labelled the prime minister’s position “untenable” and demanded he quit. Why did such defenders of truth once back a man they knew to be an enthusiastic liar? Because Mr Johnson is, in his own way, a man of his word.

When he was drumming up support for his bid for party leader, his pitch was simple: back me, keep your seat, defeat Jeremy Corbyn and do Brexit. And it all came true. Mr Corbyn was crushed and the biggest Conservative majority in three decades followed. In that election Mr Johnson promised two big things and did both. The nhs would be showered with cash, which it has been. And he would do a deal with the eu, which he did.

It was not a good deal, but it was quick and it was clear. Coming after a negotiation with the eu that lacked both speed and simplicity, it is little surprise that voters jumped at it. Mr Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, had obfuscated, attempting legalistic contortions to avoid Brexit’s brutal simplicities. Labour’s Brexit position was, in the words of one shadow cabinet minister, “bollocks”. Mr Johnson’s deal hobbles British business for little or no gain, beyond a point of principle. But it is, no more and no less, what he said he would do.

Political lying was not invented by Mr Johnson in the Brexit campaign, comforting though that idea might be. Indeed, the misleading claims of the Leave campaign sometimes revealed awkward truths. When it pointed out that Turkey was in the long process of joining the eu, for example, Remainers cried foul because other countries were likely to block its accession. Yet David Cameron could have promised to veto Turkish membership of the eu, and did not. Turkey joining the club was a long-standing British policy.

In politics, integrity is almost inevitably followed by hypocrisy. Politicians with firm moral centres can crack. Gordon Brown was feted as a son of the manse while hurling handsets at people’s heads. Tony Blair runs an institute dedicated to openness while accepting money from despots. Sir Keir Starmer stood for Labour leader by pitching himself as Mr Corbyn in a suit, and then ditched the leftiest proposals once he had won. Mr Johnson, by contrast, does not even pretend to be a family man, despite having a few of them. He has not pretended to be anything but a power-hungry cynic either. A lack of integrity becomes a form of integrity.

A competent administrator never lurked beneath that mop of thinning hair. Occasionally, a journalist has claimed otherwise in a breathless profile; Mr Johnson has not. Those who work closely with him cannot say they were fooled into thinking he was a loyal boss. His time as prime minister has been marked by the defenestration of aides. When trouble strikes Mr Johnson, deputy heads roll. Being a civil servant rather than a political appointee offers no protection. Those who help him out, for example by chipping in for new curtains in Number 10 to keep his new wife happy, end up enmeshed in scandal.

No one can claim they were not warned about Mr Johnson. He is in no sense a mystery. He is the subject of several biographies and for the past three decades has shared his views about the world in newspaper columns and articles. If he is ever silenced by ministerial responsibility, a high-profile relative can fill the gap with more Johnson trivia. Throughout his career he has left a trail of giggling journalistic colleagues with a cherished Boris story to be whipped out on special occasions, no matter how long ago or dull. The content of his character was known and yet people still saw fit to put him in power.

If voters are souring on Mr Johnson, they only have themselves to blame. The prime minister is not a monarch. In 2019 he won 43.6% of the vote, the biggest share since Margaret Thatcher. Mr Johnson is in Downing Street because just under half the country ticked a box next to a Conservative’s name. Voters are adults. They knew what they were voting for, and they voted for what they got.

It is common to blame the rise of Mr Johnson on “Have I Got News For You”, a bbc1 news quiz on which he was a frequent guest. Ian Hislop, one of the team captains, has a tart reply: “If we ask someone on and people like them, that is up to people.” Mr Johnson is not a boil that can be lanced, at which point Britain’s body politic will recover. British politics, its systems and culture, deteriorated to the point where an honest liar proved attractive. Mr Johnson benefited from chaos created by others.

Small lies, big truths

Those mps who helped put Mr Johnson in power must now decide whether to sack him for sins he has never hidden. Their choice will be made by calculating whether their voters still want him. Popularity was all that he promised, and he delivered it—until now. If his rise is depressing, his potential fall offers a glimmer of hope. British voters have, at last, begun to grow tired of Mr Johnson’s record of honest lies. A less cynical politics may prosper and populism become unpopular. But optimism should be tempered. mps would not hesitate to keep Mr Johnson if he, in turn, helped them keep their seats. If those who put the prime minister in power bring him down, they do so to absolve themselves.

Is Physics too speculative?

 

A CV of failure shows not every venture has a happy ending – and that’s OK

Julian Baggini in The Guardian


 

‘JK Rowling was a single mother on benefits, but others talked this up into a rags to riches fairy story.’ Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian


In my memory box I have a fine collection of rejection letters from editors and agents unimpressed with my first attempt at a book. Unsurprisingly, these mementoes of failure are the odd ones out in a collection that generally catalogues the highs rather than the lows of my life. We do not generally keep pictures of ex-partners from disastrous relationships on our mantelpieces, or photos of our sullen selves trapped inside a rain-swept, half-built motel.

But according to Princeton psychology professor Johannes Haushofer, we should do more to remember our failures. He has tweeted a CV of his setbacks, including lists of degree programmes he did not get into; papers that were rejected by journals; and academic positions, research funding and fellowships he did not get. Ironically, this little stunt has been a huge hit. “This darn CV of Failures has received way more attention that my entire body of academic work,” he said. Expect a TED talk and book to follow.

CV of failures: Princeton professor publishes résumé of his career lows


But the irony runs deeper. Haushofer probably would not have paraded his failures in the first place if he were not now a high-flying Princeton professor. Admitting to past defeats is easy if ultimately you have emerged the victor.

Haushofer’s confession has been praised as a breath of fresh air, a brave display of honesty. But sharing our past trials and tribulations is mainstream, not radical. No success story is complete without the chapter about overcoming adversity. Indeed, I often suspect that many people exaggerate their earlier problems in order to fit this standard narrative and if they don’t, others will do it for them. JK Rowling was a single mother on benefits, but others talked this up into a “rags to riches” fairy story. She has explicitly denied that she ever wrote in cafes to escape from an unheated flat, a story that never made much sense, given the price of a cappuccino in Edinburgh.

It is much harder to, if not celebrate, at least embrace failures when they are more than temporary setbacks. Would Hausfhofer have shared his list of rejections had they not been followed by acceptances? If so, he is braver and more honest than most. Increasingly our culture peddles the myth that with enough belief, determination, and perhaps even hard work, you can achieve anything you want. So if you do terminally fail, that can only mean that you have not tried, believed, or worked enough.

This is pernicious nonsense. The harder truth to accept is that success is never guaranteed. Luck plays its part, but there is also the simple fact that we do not know what we can achieve until we try. Success requires a happy coincidence of talent, effort and fortune, so if you try to do anything of any ambition, the possibility of failure is ever present. When our plans fail, there is no reason to think that necessarily reveals a deep failure in ourselves.

I’m not sure what I was thinking when I saved all those rejection letters. At the time, I didn’t know whether they would record mere setbacks or a thwarted ambition. But either way, they would have served a purpose. Had I not go on to have a writing career, they would have reminded me that I did at least try and that the reason I did not succeed was not for want of effort. That reminder would be sobering and humbling, which is why it would have been so valuable. If we are to go to our graves at peace with ourselves, we must be able to accept our disappointments and limitations as well as our successes.

Since I have gone on to earn my living by writing, I could wrongly take them to be proof of how my refusal to take no for an answer ensured that my talents were eventually recognised. The more honest way to see them is as evidence of how fortunate I was that eventually someone chose to take a punt on me.

In Hollywood, every failure simply serves to make the eventual success more inevitable. In real life, every past failure should be a reminder that a happy outcome was never guaranteed. Our failed relationships, terrible jobs and bad holidays reflect our characters and the reality of our lives at least as much as the good times, which often hang on a thread. Thinking more about our failures might just help us to be more grateful for the successes we enjoy and kinder to ourselves when, more often, they elude us.

This may shock you: Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest

Jill Abramson in The Guardian



It’s impossible to miss the “Hillary for Prison” signs at Trump rallies. At one of the Democratic debates, the moderator asked Hillary Clinton whether she would drop out of the race if she were indicted over her private email server. “Oh for goodness – that is not going to happen,” she said. “I’m not even going to answer that question.”

Based on what I know about the emails, the idea of her being indicted or going to prison is nonsensical. Nonetheless, the belief that Clinton is dishonest and untrustworthy is pervasive. A recent New York Times-CBS poll found that 40% of Democrats say she cannot be trusted.

For decades she’s been portrayed as a Lady Macbeth involved in nefarious plots, branded as “a congenital liar” and accused of covering up her husband’s misconduct, from Arkansas to Monica Lewinsky. Some of this is sexist caricature. Some is stoked by the “Hillary is a liar” videos that flood Facebook feeds. Some of it she brings on herself by insisting on a perimeter or “zone of privacy” that she protects too fiercely. It’s a natural impulse, given the level of scrutiny she’s attracted, more than any male politician I can think of.

I would be “dead rich”, to adapt an infamous Clinton phrase, if I could bill for all the hours I’ve spent covering just about every “scandal” that has enveloped the Clintons. As an editor I’ve launched investigations into her business dealings, her fundraising, her foundation and her marriage. As a reporter my stories stretch back to Whitewater. I’m not a favorite in Hillaryland. That makes what I want to say next surprising.

Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest and trustworthy.

The yardsticks I use for measuring a politician’s honesty are pretty simple. Ever since I was an investigative reporter covering the nexus of money and politics, I’ve looked for connections between money (including campaign donations, loans, Super Pac funds, speaking fees, foundation ties) and official actions. I’m on the lookout for lies, scrutinizing statements candidates make in the heat of an election.

The connection between money and action is often fuzzy. Many investigative articles about Clinton end up “raising serious questions” about “potential” conflicts of interest or lapses in her judgment. Of course, she should be held accountable. It was bad judgment, as she has said, to use a private email server. It was colossally stupid to take those hefty speaking fees, but not corrupt. There are no instances I know of where Clinton was doing the bidding of a donor or benefactor.

As for her statements on issues, Politifact, a Pulitzer prize-winning fact-checking organization, gives Clinton the best truth-telling record of any of the 2016 presidential candidates. She beats Sanders and Kasich and crushes Cruz and Trump, who has the biggest “pants on fire” rating and has told whoppers about basic economics that are embarrassing for anyone aiming to be president. (He falsely claimed GDP has dropped the last two quarters and claimed the national unemployment rate was as high as 35%).

I can see why so many voters believe Clinton is hiding something because her instinct is to withhold. As first lady, she refused to turn over Whitewater documents that might have tamped down the controversy. Instead, by not disclosing information, she fueled speculation that she was hiding grave wrongdoing. In his book about his time working in the Clinton White House, All Too Human, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos wrote that failing to convince the first lady to turn over the records of the Arkansas land deal to the Washington Post was his biggest regret.

The same pattern of concealment repeats itself through the current campaign in her refusal to release the transcripts of her highly paid speeches. So the public is left wondering if she made secret promises to Wall Street or is hiding something else. The speeches are probably anodyne (politicians always praise their hosts), so why not release them?

Colin Diersing, a former student of mine who is a leader of Harvard’s Institute of Politics, thinks a gender-related double standard gets applied to Clinton. “We expect purity from women candidates,” he said. When she behaves like other politicians or changes positions, “it’s seen as dishonest”, he adds. CBS anchor Scott Pelley seemed to prove Diersing’s point when he asked Clinton: “Have you always told the truth?” She gave an honest response, “I’ve always tried to, always. Always.” Pelley said she was leaving “wiggle room”. What politician wouldn’t?

Clinton distrusts the press more than any politician I have covered. In her view, journalists breach the perimeter and echo scurrilous claims about her circulated by unreliable rightwing foes. I attended a private gathering in South Carolina a month after Bill Clinton was elected in 1992. Only a few reporters were invited and we sat together at a luncheon where Hillary Clinton spoke. She glared down at us, launching into a diatribe about how the press had invaded the Clintons’ private life. The distrust continues.

These are not new thoughts, but they are fundamental to understanding her. Tough as she can seem, she doesn’t have rhino hide, and during her husband’s first term in the White House, according to Her Way, a critical (and excellent) investigative biography of Clinton by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta, she became very depressed during the Whitewater imbroglio. A few friends and aides have told me that the email controversy has upset her as badly.

Like most politicians, she’s switched some of her positions and sometimes shades the truth. In debates with Sanders, she cites her tough record on Wall Street, but her Senate bills, like one curbing executive pay, went nowhere. She favors ending the carried interest loophole cherished by hedge funds and private equity executives because it taxes their incomes at a lower rate than ordinary income. But, according to an article by Gerth, she did not sign on to bipartisan legislation in 2007 that would have closed it. She voted for a bankruptcy bill favored by big banks that she initially opposed, drawing criticism from Elizabeth Warren. Clinton says she improved the bill before voting for passage. Her earlier opposition to gay marriage, which she later endorsed, has hurt her with young people. Labor worries about her different statements on trade deals.

Still, Clinton has mainly been constant on issues and changing positions over time is not dishonest.

It’s fair to expect more transparency. But it’s a double standard to insist on her purity.

The great Murdoch conspiracy

Peter Oborne in The Telegraph on 15 July 2011

When I went to work in the House of Commons as a lobby correspondent nearly 20 years ago, I assumed that the British constitution worked along the lines we had been taught in textbooks at school and university. Which is to say: Britain was a representative democracy; the police were reasonably honest; and the country was governed under the rule of law. I naively expected MPs to be honest and driven by a sense of duty, and ministers to be public-spirited.

During my first few years at Westminster, I came to appreciate that most of my assumptions were hardly true. In particular, it became clear that power had seeped away from the Commons, which had lost many of its traditional functions. It rarely held ministers to account, and ministers no longer made their announcements to the House, as Erskine May, the rulebook of Parliament, insisted they should; instead they were leaked out through journalists.

For a number of years I was a part of this alternative system of government. We would be fed information confidentially and behind the scenes, and treated as if we were more important than elected MPs. All this was very flattering – and professionally very useful – but I couldn’t help sensing that something was wrong. It wasn’t just that the media had taken over the function of Parliament, it also meant that the traditional checks and balances no longer operated. Above all, information could be put into the public domain privately and therefore unaccountably.

All newspapers were guilty of being part of this new system, but it was exploited in particular by the Murdoch press. I believe that when Rupert Murdoch arrived on the British scene in the 1960s, he was, on balance, a force for good. The deference that still defined a great deal of political culture was challenged by Mr Murdoch, and better still he took on and defeated the print unions, which had all but destroyed the British newspaper industry in the 1970s. But by the 1990s, Murdoch’s newspapers were starting to abuse their power. The best way of demonstrating this is perhaps by examining the career of Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International who is in such trouble this week. Her professional career is, in a number of ways, a parable for the times we have lived through.

One of the greatest adventuresses of her era, she emerged on the scene when New Labour under Tony Blair was on the verge of power. During this time she was married to Ross Kemp, the EastEnders actor who was one of the most powerful defenders of New Labour. They lived in south London, emphasising the faux-proletarian credentials that were such an important, if misleading, part of the New Labour message.

As New Labour’s star waned, Rebekah Brooks changed course. She ceased to be the cool, metropolitan figure favoured by New Labour. She moved to Oxfordshire, took up riding and became the central figure in the now notorious Chipping Norton set. Meanwhile, her titles changed their allegiance. The political editor of the Sun might have been deemed to lack the impeccable social credentials demanded by an incoming Tory government. He was replaced by an Old Marlburian.
The identical transfiguration took place at The Times, where Phil Webster, one of the few remaining journalists in Fleet Street who has come up the hard way, was removed. Webster, who had been a favourite of the Blair government, found himself replaced as political editor by Roly Watson, who had been a member of Pop, the exclusive club at Eton, at the same time as David Cameron. A pattern was clear. Rebekah Brooks (like all the News International insiders) attached herself like glue to whichever political party held the ascendancy.
During the Blair years, News International executives, Mrs Brooks among them, would attend the annual Labour Party conference, but they were scarcely treated as journalists. When Tony Blair gave his leadership speech, they would be awarded seats just behind the cabinet, as if they had been co-opted into the Government. Arguably they had. The first telephone call that Blair made after he had escaped from the conference hall was routinely to Rupert Murdoch himself. And when ministers who had been favoured by the Murdoch press left office, they would be rewarded. David Blunkett and Alastair Campbell were both given columns on News International publications.
A version of this process repeated itself when Gordon Brown became prime minister, with Rebekah Brooks attending Sarah Brown’s cringe-making “pyjama party” at Chequers. It may not suit Mr Brown, who made such a passionate speech in the Commons yesterday, to remember it but he, too, was part of the Murdoch system of government. And so was David Cameron, who last October threw a party for his closest friends to celebrate his 44th birthday. Reportedly everyone present had known the Prime Minister all his adult life – with the exception of Mrs Brooks.
There was a very sinister element to these relationships. At exactly the same time that Mrs Brooks was getting on so famously with the most powerful men and women in Britain, the employees of her newspapers (as we now know) were listening in to their voicemails and illicitly gaining access to deeply personal information.
One News of the World journalist once told me how this information would be gathered into dossiers; sometimes these dossiers were published, sometimes not. The knowledge that News International held such destructive power must have been at the back of everyone’s minds at the apparently cheerful social events where the company’s executives mingled with their client politicians.
Let’s take the case of Tessa Jowell. When she was Culture Secretary five years ago, News International hacked into her phone and spied on her in other ways. What was going on amounted to industrial espionage, since Ms Jowell was then charged with the regulation and supervision of News International, and the media group can scarcely have avoided discovering commercially sensitive information, even though its primary purpose was to discover details about Ms Jowell’s private life.
Yet consider this: Ms Jowell was informed of this intrusion at the time and said nothing. More curious still, she retained her friendship with Rebekah Brooks and other News International figures. Indeed, Ms Jowell appears to have been present at the Cotswolds party thrown by Matthew Freud, son-in-law of Rupert Murdoch, only 10 days ago.
James Murdoch, heir apparent to the Murdoch empire, was also present. These parties were, in effect, a conspiracy between the British media and the political class against the country as a whole. They were the men and women who governed Britain and decided who was up and who was out. Government policy was influenced and sometimes created. I doubt very much whether Britain would have invaded Iraq but for the foolhardy support of the Murdoch press.
The effect on government policy was wretched. Decisions were determined by consideration of the following day’s headlines rather than sound analysis. Furthermore, private favours were dispensed; Blair when prime minister spoke to his Italian counterpart Silvio Berlusconi about one of Murdoch’s business deals in Italy. Of course it was all kept secret, though details did sometimes leak out. All recent prime ministers have insisted that their meetings with Murdoch were confidential and did not need to be disclosed, as if they were somehow private affairs. Mercifully, Cameron – who has partially emerged from the sewer thanks to his Commons statement – has put an end to this concealment.
It has taken the horror of the revelations concerning the targeting by the Murdoch empire of the family of Milly Dowler, terrorist victims and even relatives of British war dead to bring this corrupt, complicit, and conspiratorial system of government to light.
The process of exposure has taken far too long, but there is at last hope. Two years ago, Rebekah Brooks contemptuously turned down an invitation to give evidence to MPs about how she operated. Next week, Rupert Murdoch, his son James and the reluctant Brooks will all be dragged before them.
The system of collaboration between an over-mighty press and timorous politicians is being exposed. There is hope that we can return to a more decent system of government; that Parliament can reassert its rights, and that ministers will make their decisions for the right reasons and not simply to ingratiate themselves with Murdoch and his newspaper editors. Perhaps the sickness that has demeaned and distorted British politics for the last two decades is at last being challenged and confronted.