I start by offering you an outrageous fact: It’s illegal not to tell prospective buyers when a house has been subject to flooding but it’s perfectly legal to tell the electorate that climate change isn’t real, isn’t important or can wait. It’s even illegal to “mislead by false or deceptive messaging” when advertising but not at all when a politician is on the stump. Why do we demand that an estate agent or advertising agency tell the truth but we do not demand it of our politicians?
Something complicated and weird happens when reality reaches Westminster. ‘Politics’ seizes truth, distorts it, and smothers it. Increasingly often, and increasingly openly, politics abandons truth altogether. Undeniable, urgent, clear information arrives, only to enter a world where ‘up’ can as easily be ‘down’ and moral compasses spin. What happens up there? And what, if anything, can be done about it?
Is all hope lost?
We watch in fascinated dismay as democracy erodes across the Atlantic, and we tremble at it. We notice how conspiracy theories seize the minds of voters. We see that ‘alternative facts’ are especially persuasive and extraordinarily sticky. We observe that when it comes to lies, ‘bigger’ really does seem to be ‘better’, and doubling down works. We watch the votes these derelictions of duty deliver and notice how slight and helpless truth appears to be among the tumult in the public square. It all seems overwhelming and hopeless, like an unstoppable tide swallowing the foundations of politics and bringing civilisation down, brick by brick.
But (and it’s a big ‘but’) perhaps we’re not as impotent as we think? Maybe there’s more hope than at first appears. And it’s just possible that we’re in a time of particular opportunity, spearheaded by the Welsh. Is this a particularly good time for us? Should we re-focus our efforts into changing political behaviour in a more radical way? And are there more grounds for optimism than we think? More weapons in our armoury than we once imagined? And is there not a new, free, progressive force suddenly available, right where it matters?
Misinformation and disinformation: do they matter?
The World Economic Forum’s two-year risk analysis from 2024 suggests that misinformation and disinformation are the greatest threats to world order. I’d add magical thinking to this list.
An important politician is applauded for claiming to be a “net zero sceptic” and talks of “zealotry”, heading back to “the stone age” and the country being “bankrupted”. Others attribute climate change to the sun and volcanoes, promise to scrap “net stupid zero”, call climate science “garbage” and claim that climate denier scientists are “not a minority”. All are lies, but all are becoming mainstream as many MPs from several parties hop onto what looks rather like a bandwagon.
Governments deploy magical thinking: carbon capture and storage, and sustainable aviation fuel, for example, are uncertain and unlikely to scale up. However, they allow political cans to be kicked further down the road of indiscriminate, fossil-fuel-based, economic growth, itself a species of magical thought.
At bottom, all this lethal disinformation claims that climate change is just another problem which can wait in line. It isn’t, and it can’t.
We have a government committed to net zero 2050. It faces a Conservative opposition running on climate scepticism, driven by the desire to stem the flow of support to the vociferously climate-denialist insurgent Reform Party. We are all in extreme political danger, as is the climate.
Why only in Wales?
Let’s look at one sign of hope and one of potential. We can start in Cardiff.
The Welsh Senedd is enquiring into its own standards of conduct and process. As part of this, they are exploring how to sanction Members of the Senedd who knowingly dispense disinformation, that is, who deliberately lie. To achieve this, a standards committee with genuine teeth is being proposed.
In Westminster we see similar opportunities not being seized. The Parliamentary Modernisation Select Committee has been resurrected. Part of its remit is to consider standards, including ethical standards, but they look only within parliament. This is not enough, of course, as the most important lies are being told outside the House, on the stump. The other parliamentary ethics committee, the Committee on Standards, is currently not considering the mendacity of MPs outside the House, where it matters most. It surely should?
Who can help?
But as we have just seen, there are important ethical winds beginning to blow, albeit apparently more powerfully in Wales than Westminster. We clearly need to influence bodies like the parliamentary Committee on Standards, hard and immediately.
The House of Commons now holds 72 Lib Dem MPs, many of them genuinely ‘progressive’ people. This offers us an unusual potential. A Lib Dem bloc of 72 MPs cannot affect legislative change, but this is an invigorating freedom which empowers them to step back and address ‘politics’ itself. Their work lies elsewhere than in the Chamber. And one thing on which all Lib Dems passionately agree is the need for electoral reform. They mainly seek Proportional Representation (PR), but supressing mendacity in politics by turning it honest, is in the same family as PR. It’s electoral reform in neon upper case – a fundamental Lib Dem value and goal.
A bloc of 72 MPs is sizeable and can make itself heard; almost every parliamentary committee has at least one Lib Dem on it. They are embedded in parliamentary process, and they are numerous. This gives them meaningful clout. Perhaps they need, and maybe they would welcome, a powerful push towards a politics based on truth.
In short, the Lib Dems could develop a very Lib Dem kind of uber-project which would be easily understood, and enthusiastically received, by voters. Addressing mendacity and disinformation in politics is obviously desirable and ethically answerable. It would be massively popular and help to rescue our politics from dangerous distrust. This door is already being prised open, at least in Wales.
Isn’t it time for a TIP (Truth In Politics) campaign? Let’s make a start by writing, all of us and right now, to the Parliamentary Standards Committee, our own MPs, the Lib Dem leadership, the press and everyone else who seems even remotely relevant. Let’s do it right now, and let’s do it the Welsh way.
Let’s not die from disinformation!
We want to hear your views. Please send any comments to editor@westenglandbylines.co.uk
