Three questions

Has your MP ever been untruthful on an important issue?

Has your MP ever supported his party in such untruth?

Has your MP ever stood up for truth against such dishonesty?

We live in a complicated and dangerous world. These are risky times. It’s the job of politicians to navigate the ship of state through this world and these times. It’s their job to navigate in such a way that we catch a good wind and don’t hit the rocks ahead.

But politics can’t, and won’t, make sense unless we get some honesty back. Politicians have to agree that facts really are facts, and truth actually matters. Then they have to act on this - honestly. They have to find the truth, tell the truth, and act on the truth. Otherwise, we’re sunk.

Climate change is one area where the rocks are especially dangerous. Dishonesty makes safe passage very unlikely. If we don’t base the debate about our future on what we know to be real today, then we can’t, and won’t, make sense of it. Spin and disinformation are the dishonest enemies of truth. Spin distorts it. Disinformation kills it dead. Party politics encourages both of them.

Ignoring the rocks and the increasingly desperate cries of the lookout won’t help. Neither will postponing action to another time. A rock is a rock. Plunging blindly ahead risks tearing the bottom out of the ship.

Politics is becoming increasingly dishonest - but it’s where our future must be addressed and built.

One example of extremely important dishonesty will make our point. Our government claims we must “max out North Sea oil and gas”. They also claim that we must, and will, reach net zero by 2050. But these ambitions are absolutely incompatible. They’re impossible. All of science and every reliable authority tells us so, loud and clear. The one ambition rules the other out, absolutely. This is not opinion, but scientifically established fact.

We could either max out the North Sea, or we could get to net zero by 2050, but it’s scientifically and mathematically impossible to do both. Our politicians must know this, or certainly ought to.

It’s party-political spin, it’s deliberate disinformation - and it’s dangerously dishonest.

We can’t do anything useful with our politics if this level of dishonesty is normalised. It’s got to stop. We, the voters of this country, may be the only ones who can stop it. The future has to be built by politics, but honesty is the foundation on which it must rest if it is to work for us. When we come to election time, therefore, the questions we started this article with are far and away the most important ones to ask. They’re absolutely fundamental. We must elect honesty.

Sources: There are many authoritative organisations which collect and consider research and produce dependable analyses. They all report similar conclusions to the one above. They include:

The Guardian newspaper publishes excellent analyses, full of links to their sources: https://tinyurl.com/3azk8yf5 - a good place to start your search.