Why "all politicians are liars"?

I'm quoting from a friend of mine who is a Conservative party faithful. Someone who delivers leaflets, always talks up the Conservative party, openly votes Conservative, will stand at the voting station and be a teller, contributes financially...

The quote came from a time when Conservatives were in power.

(By the way I'm not a loyal member of any political party!) By the way we have been friends since the 1990s - this is the United Kingdom and here we can hold opposing political views and still be friends (unlike our former colony over the herring-bone where party political opponents are considered mad, dangerous or evil...)

Anyway, she made this comment effortlessly over dinner one evening. I'm sure that were she to meet her MP he/she would see her as a committed, loyal party member - which she is! But she is hardly likely to say 'all politicians are liars' in his hearing!

How then is it possible for someone like that to make such a statement.

Sadly I believe it's because it is almost true. I say almost because I am sure that people enter politics often with the best and purest of motives - to serve and help the people of their country. (That's a bit generous; clearly some enter politics entirely to serve their own ego...) But as they get closer to the corridors of power so a kind of sickness invades their minds. It happens like this; in order to get one's ideals converted into action you have to be elected, and re-elected. The only effective way to be elected is by being a party candidate. But to be a party candidate you have to hold the party's views, whether you believe them or not. And once you are in a position of authority or in the cabinet you absolutely must tow the party line. Remember how Johnson and Starmer both evicted fellow MPs on the slimmest of pretexts very early on; that is how you make everyone compliant, by picking some victims and bullying them.

Once you've been around the circuit a few times you begin to focus not on getting your values into politics, but on being re-elected - at first because that is the necessary route to enable you to put forward your beliefs. But eventually you forget your principles, and become so used to promoting your party's views - even when you don't believe in them - that you become entirely compromised. And winning the next election becomes the only objective left. And once you start lying - for that is what it requires - it becomes habitual. First it starts with just not answering awkward questions, or answering a different question, or obfuscating your answer; then you start to preface downright untruths with phrases like "let me be completely clear" or worse "I want to be completely honest." (For the complete play-book watch Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister.) At this point I want to interject my experience with a double glazing salesman. I asked them for a quote as a kind of bench-mark. It was the 'leading' company in the field - one whose name everyone knows and no-one trusts! The man sat down and looked me in the eye and said; "I want to be completely honest with you..." He then went on to offer me a string of discounts that he said "I wouldn't normally offer but..." When, later, he phoned me to ask why they didn't get the contract he said "was it the price?" I said "partly..." He was about to end the call so I said "don't you want to know what the other part was? " "Oh, ok then yes."

I said "You told me that you wanted to be completely honest with me. That means that you aren't always completely honest. In which case I have no way of knowing whether you were being honest when you said 'I want to be completely honest with you.' Therefore I don't trust you. That's the other reason you didn't get the contract."

He seemed genuinely confused! Which brings us back to politics. By the time a politician has gone around the circuit a few times, avoidoing answering, obfuscating, distracting, misleading and eventually outright lying - they have lost contact with the truth.

Some people - for instance Bojo or Trump - cannot be accused of lying since they arguably never had any idea what truth and honesty meant in the first place; they just believe that whatever they say is true - even if it completely contradicts what they said the day before. One has to pity them really. It's a kind of mental disease.

And so it is that eventually people (mostly) of good intentions become corrupted by the means of and need for election and are parted from any vestige of integrity they may have been brought up with.

Against this background - and by the way, the electorate can see through this and are sick to death with it - someone like Farage seems to bring a refreshing breeze. After all he will actually answer questions directly. Very often he seems to be honest - however fascist we may judge his political views to be. And in despair for a floating log of truth in the crocodile infested swamp of mainstream politics, people decide "What the hell, I'm fed up with the ones we've had before - let's give this new approach a try." About 10 years ago John Bercoe said in parliament "if we're not careful, we will lose the trust of the electorate." I wrote to him and said "I'm sorry to inform you that that particular boat sailed decades ago." He didn't reply. But that is how out of touch most of our elected representatives are. They pitifully believe that we believe their lies, although deep down they know they have parted ways with truth, honesty and integrity years and years ago. If they don't wake up to this fact then we are doomed to go down the same tragic and evil route that others have gone down or are going down - fascist dictatorship. Under that kind of regime you don't have to think anymore, or try to work out which of the candidates are less dishonest than the rest. You won't have to vote again. As Trump said to a group of people last year "Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what? It'll be fixed, it'll be fine. You won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians." (The Believers' Summit on July 26, 2024) Like Hitler (among others) he occasionally comes out with staggeringly honest statements about his malevolent intentions, which of course are almost impossible to distinguish from all the lies.