What is the cost of lies?

“What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we’ll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth and content ourselves instead with stories? In these stories, it doesn’t matter who the heroes are. All we want to know is: “Who is to blame?”

Valery Legasov – Chernobyl 

Are we past the point where we can recognise truth? How many persist in seeking it?  Are most content to choose from favourite stories instead? The 2019 UK general election was not a democratic choice between truthful options – it was a referendum that confirmed the British love affair with liars and lies. 

The Conservative Party (aided every step of the way by the overwhelming majority of the media) lied about almost everything.  A study found that 88% of their Facebook adverts were either willfully misleading or outright lies. The Tory catchphrase of a swift decisive  ‘Get Brexit Done’ was a lie – years and years of grinding negotiations lie ahead.  

Brexit will not happen any time soon and the lies about the timetable are minor compared to the way Brexit was sold in the first place – Brexit will not be a panacea that will reverse the declining fortunes of the working class – that is a lie. A Tory Brexit will lead to a corporate power grab by US corporations who can scarcely believe their luck. The Tories have said that the NHS will be protected from vulture capitalism – that is a lie – the next five years will mark the de facto end of the NHS as we know it.

The smear campaign that cast Jeremy Corbyn (a lifelong campaigner against racism) and the Labour membership (of half a million) as antisemites were lies. The allegations that Corbyn was a terrorist sympathiser were lies. 

The ‘centrist’ insistence that Labour had to embrace a 2nd referendum on Brexit for electoral success was all a lie – they knew it was electoral poison, they wanted Corbyn’s Labour to lose because they are not centrists – merely tories in red rosettes – it was a trap.

What the Tories said about extra nurses, police and hospitals were all lies – but nobody seems to care. Boris Johnson has been caught out lying time and time again, this used to matter – now people regard lying as the only political skill worth having. Johnson’s lies are instinctive – he regards the truth as an enemy and simply changes his stories exactly in line with expediency and self- interest – this used to be shameful, now it is essential. 

It was illuminating to watch the egregious Jo Swinson apologise for the electoral failure of the Lib Dems – she didn’t apologise for screaming for a second referendum on Brexit because ignoring the first vote was wrong – she simply said  ‘it obviously didn’t work’ – in the great political raffle of lies Swinson had simply picked the wrong ticket, it had never even occurred to her to tell the truth. 

It is easy to see the appeal of lies – they are simple and require little effort, they give us the stories we want and crucially someone to blame. Jeremy Corbyn will be blamed for the loss of the 2019 election but that is a lie built atop a mound of other lies. The real problem transcends party politics, it is a societal cancer – many (most?) of us are incapable of identifying the truth anymore and fewer still seem to care. Our society is built on lies, our journalism is propaganda and our institutions are ran by liars who see no value in the truth.

When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.

Who will pay the debt for the lies that passed as truth in this election? With stinging unfairness – it will be those least responsible for telling them. The enablers of the super wealthy – all the politicians, journalists and spin doctors will be more than fine. In a society that has become allergic to the truth, liars are well rewarded for burying it.

But truth doesn’t stop being truth just because it is buried under lies – the debt will be paid for in homelessness, food banks and crumbling public services. The biggest crime against the truth will be our continued apathy and hubris about climate change – we are selling out posterity to maintain the status quo – the interest on that debt will be savage and our children will pay it.

I dread the next five years of this extreme right-wing government – innocent people in their millions are going to suffer. How many more will be killed by the conscious cruelty of a swaggering Conservative party that has no limit on its actions now? What will be left of free speech, human rights and worker protections after five years of Johnson? What god-awful wars will be embroiled in? What damage will be done to the environment? How much more will our ability to deal with truth be eroded?   

We will leave you with one final quote from the HBO’s magnificent mini-series about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster – a show not really about a nuclear explosion but about an all too human aversion towards truth. 

“To be a scientist is to be naive. We are so focused on our search for the truth we fail to consider how few actually want us to find it. But it is always there whether we see it or not, whether we choose to or not. The truth doesn’t care about our needs or wants, it doesn’t care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie in wait for all time. And this, at last, is the gift of Chernobyl. Where I once would fear the cost of truth, now I only ask: What is the cost of lies?”