It’s potentially the last political party conference season before the next general election – unless the Tories want to eek the whole term out to the grim and bitter end. As one of their former Chancellors once said, they are in office, but not in power.
Even Twitter has broken which sort of reflects the way this whole s…show is going. Normally I’d have sat through the ministerial speeches, but what was the point? When it became clear that their whole strategy was about throwing out a host of things that were just not true, or inflammatory statements designed to take up the column inches and distract the public from the revelations from the Covid Inquiry, what’s the point? Things such as:
- Rishi Sunak still not having handed over WhatsApp messages – ministerial business should never have been done on that system anyway
- Rishi Sunak rejecting medical advice to pay people forced to stay in and isolate
- Rishi Sunak being accused by the BMA (representing doctors) of creating misinformation with his ‘eat out to help out’ policy.
Remember this was at the time when there was no vaccine. It’s easy to forget how terrifying that whole time was.
Interestingly, broadcast journalists are starting to call out the lies and falsehoods. Here’s Victoria Derbyshire from about 4mins in on Newsnight.
And Sophy Ridge on Sky.
How is it possible for civil servants working in policy teams for ministers to develop public policy if the starting base they have to work with is based on a pack of mis/disinformation?
For those of you unfamiliar with the Civil Service Code, note the top four values
- ‘integrity’ is putting the obligations of public service above your own personal interests
- ‘honesty’ is being truthful and open
- ‘objectivity’ is basing your advice and decisions on rigorous analysis of the evidence
- ‘impartiality’ is acting solely according to the merits of the case and serving equally well governments of different political persuasions
Above – from the Civil Service Code
The integrity of UK elections also remains a huge problem – something successive governments have refused to empower the Electoral Commission to deal with. (See the House of Lords Library here).
The next general election will be grim – bombarded with false information and made-up, off-the-cuff Boris-style soundbites that will have travelled halfway around the world before truth has put on its shoes.
The Green Party start their conference this weekend – 6-8 October, followed by Labour’s on 8-11 October. How they deal with the avalanche of misinformation thrown at them by ministers remains to be seen.
The Cambridge Town Owl 