Lying has become institutionalised

On 24 April 2005, The Times got it right when it reported thus:

"New Labour has imposed upon political life a culture of lying... Under new Labour, lying has become institutionalised. Deliberate lies, deceptions, evasions, omissions, confusions and the thousand other tricks of bamboozlement are characteristic of new Labour and of Blair himself. This has been peculiarly demoralising in a man who came to power claiming 'to uphold the highest standards in public life,' undertaking to be 'purer than pure', promising as late as 2002 to sack any minister who lied, preening himself on his personal integrity...

While Conservatives have lied for many of the conventional reasons, including personal self-interest, new Labour’s attitude to mendaciousness is different... It’s a culture of institutionalised lying, not for personal profit but in the name of the new Labour project.

New Labour doesn’t do morally wrong. New Labour is inherently morally right, regardless. Regardless of the truth."

That same month, The Rise of Political Lying, by the political editor of The Spectator, Peter Oborne, was published. In this Oborne said:

"The presence of a group of shameless, habitual liars at the centre of power is an amazing state of affairs, without precedent in modern British history".

In response to the mounting criticism of this deceitful ethos, on 28 April 2005, with gobsmackingly erectile chutzpah, Blair said this in an interview with Sky News:

"I have never told a lie. No. I don't intend to go telling lies to people. I did not lie over Iraq."

On the same day, he said this to the audience of ITV News's Ballot Box Jury:

"If you believe that I stood up there and told a whole lot of lies then that is a reason for not voting for me".

It sure was a reason, Tony. It was a great, big elephant-in-the-room type of reason. And yet, according to the votes that were cast in Sedgefield, more than 24,000 lemmings, teletubbies, dimwits, lickspittles and groupies voted for you in that neck of the woods in May 2005.

If you didn't rig the result, it looks like the British people are now so dumbed-down, drugged-up, decadent and docile that they'd vote for a farting arse if it was famous.

Of course, some might legitimately point out that the only viable alternative was a Jewish chap who was right up there cheerleading the Thatcherian rape of the British working-classes.

Michael Howard voted to go to war as well. It wasn't much of a choice, I confess.

But then the Sedgefield constituent could've voted for Reg Keys, a decent bloke whose son was killed in Iraq. 4,252 did so, which means were not dead yet, I guess. But for the most part, when I see what the majority of the British people are prepared to tolerate, I sometimes wonder why I bother.

And then I remember that those who voted for the great traitor have children and ancestors. I also remember that the truth, in any age, even when it's utterly unfashionable, matters.

A month after the Times article said what it said, George Bush opined thus at a High School in New York:

"See, in my line of work YOU GOT TO KEEP REPEATING THINGS OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN for the truth to sink in, TO KIND OF CATPULT THE PROPAGANDA."

Propaganda: like the WMD thing. Over and over again.

Remember what Josef Goebbels said, ladies and gentlemen?

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

Actually, he never said it. He said similar things but the closest to the statement above can be found in Mein Kampf.

In that book, Hitler says this:

"Propagandist technique... must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."

Here's something Goebbels did say:

"The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous." ('Churchill's Lie Factory,' 12 January 1941)

It's almost as if Goebbels had Bush, Blair and the Sedgefield teletubbie in mind when he was saying it, isn't it?