ALMOST immediately after Boris Johnson entered Downing Street in July 2019 it became plain that he was abusing his office to lie and fabricate on a scale far greater than any previous British Prime Minister.
It was also evident that most newspapers and broadcasters had no appetite to challenge Johnson’s lies and falsehoods. At best they allowed them to pass unchallenged. At worst they were complicit in spreading them.
For this reason we started this website ahead of the 2019 general election to record the lies, falsehoods and misleading statements uttered by Boris Johnson, his ministers, officials and certain Tory MPs. It has been running ever since.
By the time that Boris Johnson left office in disgrace in summer 2022, the website had recorded approximately eighty occasions when he misled the House of Commons in defiance of his own ministerial code.
Neither Liz Truss nor Rishi Sunak has been much of an improvement. Indeed Sunak has also proved, as this website records, a profligate liar. In the five years which have elapsed since Johnson became prime minister we have identified, sifted and analysed almost 1,000 lies, false or misleading statements from Tory prime ministers and ministers. An epidemic of deceit unprecedented in British history.
With the general election upon us we relaunch this website- with one additional feature. This time we include lies, falsehoods and misleading statements from Sir Keir Starmer and his team.
Why Lying Matters
Many believe that it is in the nature of politicians to dissimulate and lie. They say that it is as futile to complain about this as to complain that wasps sting.
But many politicians possess integrity. If you shrug your shoulders and say they are all liars, then you are giving a free pass to the liars and cheats.
Remember: political lying has consequences. Governments which get away with lies get away with the misgovernment the lies protect. They never take responsibility for error and failure. Billions of pounds are siphoned by cronies or simply wasted.
Service people give their lives in wrongful wars and there are thousands of premature avoidable deaths, not only in pandemics, but in the normal course of bad government decisions on healthcare.
People lose trust in their governments and ignore them even when they are telling the truth. They therefore persist in behaviours which are harmful to them, their families, their community, their country and their planet.
For these reasons all lies by governments are significant, even those which seem trivial. Together they build a fog which blots out the boundary between truth and falsehood and hides the faces of those who do dark deeds in the state.
What is a Lie?
It is a delicate matter calling anyone a liar, let alone a Minister of the Crown – someone claiming its lingering moral authority and supported by servants of the Crown with a reputation for honesty and impartiality.
It is delicate because there is a hierarchy of lying.
At the summit – or more, accurately, the nadir – are outright falsehoods, published or uttered with intent to deceive.
There is a much wider category which is best described in a legal phrase – statements which are “reckless as to the truth”, assertions without evidence presented as fact. They might be true, they might not be: those who make them do not care.
Then there are statements which are virtually pure rhetoric or propaganda, which barely have any meaning but are intended to influence the mood of the listener or reader.
Lies are compounded and deepened when they are repeated or simply left on the record. A statement moves up (or down) from propaganda to outright falsehood when a politician expects people to go on believing it.
Within the term lying we include any statement deliberately intended to make its audience believe something which is less than the whole truth. It may be a statement known to be false at the time it was made. But it may also include statements which rely on partial or selective facts and those based on false inferences and interpretations.
Politicians — like people in any other walk of life — may make false statements in good faith. But it is then their duty to correct or retract a false statement the moment they know it to be inaccurate. If they continue to rely on it they turn it into a lie.
Lying to Parliament
Such false statements are especially damaging when they are made in Parliament. That is because governments act only with the consent of Parliament.
Any government undermines and may ultimately destroy its right to be obeyed if it obtains this consent by false statements. (Bear in mind that in other walks of life people regularly go to prison for such behaviour.)
It follows that when a British minister appears in front of either House, especially the elected one, voters are entitled to assume that he or she is speaking the truth.
This is established in unequivocal terms in the Code of Conduct for Ministers, which states that “it is of paramount importance that Ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity. Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the Prime Minister.”
This rule has worked in the past. It fell into disuse under the Tories.
Press and Media
In recent years the British mainstream media have been careful to play down – and often entirely ignore – lies and misleading statements by successive Tory prime ministers. Some journalists have gone a step further, and actively collaborated with Downing Street in order to distribute false information helpful to the Conservative cause.
This means that British newspapers have played an important role in the production and dissemination of the lies and false statements produced by government. It is not only the press which does this. The supposedly impartial BBC has repeatedly failed to hold lying ministers to account.
In this website we include examples where journalists have tamely allowed the Prime Minister and others to get away with telling their lies and falsehoods. These instances can be searched for on the website under the category ‘client journalism’. We also give credit where due to journalists who ask the right questions, or expose lies and falsehoods.
Heartfelt Thanks to Donors
Five years ago we appealed for funds to record, sift and analyse the numerous lies, falsehoods and misleading statements of Boris Johnson and his colleagues. We are intensely grateful for the support of hundreds of people who have generously and selflessly subscribed funds which have allowed me to build this website.
We have used the money to hire a dedicated team who have researched and fact-checked Mr Johnson’s statements as best as possible. This website is therefore only possible thanks to the generosity of ordinary people who are affronted by a pattern of deceit which the mainstream media, many MPs and Parliament itself have either ignored, taken for granted or actively encouraged since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister in July 2019.
The early content on this website was originally published in the run up to the general election in 2019. While much of it remains highly relevant, we have generally resisted the temptation to go back to entries made at the time and add retrospective commentary. We have also added a handful of new falsehoods which we failed to spot at the time.
The format of each entry is as follows:
- Date
- The lie/false statement in question (written in bold)
- The source + link
- Facts: the information needed to assess the statement and place it in context
- Verdict: assesses its status in the hierarchy of truth and falsehood
Our search feature found at the top of the homepage allows readers to search the entire list of entries with ease.
Peter Oborne and James Willcocks, June 2024