Here’s a thought. One that should keep some MPs awake at night. Are politicians intrinsically untrustworthy? Are only people who are predisposed to being economical with the truth attracted to a career in public life?
Or are they a misunderstood bunch? The good guys. Just ordinary men and women who want to make the world a better place. It’s just the nature of the job that forces them into some uneasy compromises with the truth.
If so, does a bit of them die each time they trade in half-truths and lies? Are they corroded from the inside till they are little more than a fragile carapace? Or are they born again each day, untainted by the falsehoods of the past?
These existential questions were on the minds of the culture select committee as it gathered to take evidence on misinformation from the money-saving expert Martin Lewis, AKA, in many quarters, the most trusted man in Britain. A man who can be guaranteed to tell the truth.
“What makes someone a trusted voice?” asked the Scottish National party MP John Nicolson. A man who had good cause to wonder, as he was later to be referred to the privileges committee for the heinous crime of trying to get Nadine Dorries referred to the privileges committee for misleading the select committee by making public his correspondence with the speaker. Go figure. Only in parliament.
Lewis didn’t need a moment to think. The key thing was to be inherently trustworthy in the first place. On this bombshell … Trustworthiness wasn’t something that could be created. Or marketed. He’d once been in a meeting where some energy companies had begged David Cameron to help them become more trustworthy. Lewis had interrupted the love-in. He would do anything he could to stop trusting the energy companies, because most of the information they passed on through their call centres was incorrect.
And much the same applied to politicians, he continued. The problem was cabinet collective responsibility and the whipping system. Everyone knew that MPs voted for things in which they did not believe to stay onside with their party. So politicians shouldn’t complain when people think they tell lies. Or get too precious if they do defy the party line and act on principle. Take it on the chin. When it comes to the truth, MPs are near the bottom of the food chain.
Take Rishi Sunak. All those promises he made during his summer leadership campaign? Forget them. He lost the leadership contest to the deranged Liz Truss so all bets are off. No one should for a minute imagine that he still believes the same things now as he did a few months ago.
All he now believes is in a damage limitation campaign to get him through to the next election. At which point he’s toast. Everything is geared to making him not look weak and indecisive. Which is how the whole country sees him. Not even the Tories believe in him any more.
Rish! has created a cabinet in his own image. Largely by force majeure. Believe it or not, the current crop of ministers are what passes for competence. Only in the UK would we have a business secretary who in a former life invented pseudonyms to sell a get-rich-quick-scheme. And Grant Shapps wonders why no one takes him seriously. Though – incredibly – he’s seen by Sunak as one of the few safe pairs of hands.
Shapps was in the Commons to make a statement on Sizewell C. If you thought this was familiar, you’d be right. The government had already committed to the nuclear power station in the recent budget. But there is so little news to report – partly because there are no plans and partly because, when there is, Tory MPs start objecting – that ministers are now re-announcing old statements. It won’t be long before the transport secretary announces the opening of the M25.
Understandably, Ed Miliband, the shadow energy secretary, was underwhelmed. Why had Shapps come over all Shakespearean in his enthusiasm for renewables as he attempted to pad out his statement beyond 30 seconds. Everyone knew Shapps hated onshore wind turbines and Rish! hated solar panels. And the government had done nothing to insulate 19m homes. Shapps – or Green or Fox or whatever he was calling himself today – said the offshore turbines were too big for onshore. Everyone looked blank. Just make the onshore ones a bit smaller. Duh!
Still, there was one person to admire and trust in Westminster on Tuesday. Though she wasn’t a politician. She was a politician’s wife. Then Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s first lady, had never bargained on being a public figure.
She had married a comedian and the closest she had expected to get to celebrity was the green room of a TV chatshow. Then Volodymr Zelenskiy had become president. Almost as a joke. And when Russia invaded Ukraine, he had become an unexpected hero. A politician loved and admired by millions inside and outside his country.
Zelenska was in London to remind the UK of the war crimes being committed in Ukraine and she spoke to 100 or so MPs and peers – Boris Johnson was demoted to the cheap seats: how are the mighty fallen – in committee room 14. You’d have thought parliament could have found somewhere a little grander than the usual haunt of Tory leadership contests.
And she was hugely impressive. Not only because she had a just cause in which she and her audience could believe. But because of her delivery. There was none of the theatrics born of the Oxbridge debating societies so often found in Westminster. Just a quiet, plain delivery. Almost fragile. Not so much a speech. More a prayer.
Trust; you’ve either got it or you haven’t.
A year in Westminster with John Crace, Marina Hyde and Armando Iannucci
Join John Crace, Marina Hyde and Armando Iannucci for a look back at another chaotic year in Westminster, live at Kings Place in London, or via the livestream.
Wednesday 7 December 2022, 7pm-8.15pm GMT. Book tickets here
