Greens have responded to the lies told by the Prime Minister and mismanaging of covid-19. Green MP Caroline Lucas wrote in Green World ‘If people can’t believe what the Prime Minister is saying because lies are interspersed so freely with the truth, then trust in our democracy is undermined’, saying:
One of the most worrying global political trends is the declining faith in democracy. In the UK, three in five people said they weren’t happy with the way our democracy worked.
If we are to hold on to our precious democratic values and freedoms, we need leadership that we can trust. But we have Boris Johnson, a prime minister with an infamous track record for lying. He was sacked twice for it in previous jobs. And one of his former editors has said of him that ‘Johnson would not recognise truth … if confronted by it in an identity parade’.
This is not just lying in speeches on the campaign trail, or making pledges that he has no intention of keeping. Johnson persistently lies to Parliament, driving a coach and horses through the Ministerial Code and the Nolan Principles which set out the standards expected of public office holders.
The Ministerial Code says Ministers must give ‘accurate and truthful information to Parliament’. If a mistake is made, it should be corrected as soon as possible. If the Minister has knowingly misled MPs, they are expected to offer their resignation to the Prime Minister.
But it is the Prime Minister who is misleading Parliament. What we are seeing from Boris Johnson is a shameless normalisation of lying which discredits the office of Prime Minister and undermines Parliament’s ability to hold the Government to account. His persistent failure to be honest and truthful is treating Parliament with contempt.
She will be joined by MPs from six opposition parties and the Commons speaker Sir Lindsay Hole to urge him to allow them to table a vote to refer the PM’s ‘consistent failure to be honest’ to the committee of privileges, launching an enquiry in to his conduct.
Peter Stefanovic has collected 10 examples of the PM telling lies:
Jonathan Bartley asked BBC why they have not reported on the PM’s wrongful statements, asking ‘what’s more important than a Prime Minister telling the truth?’:
The Ministerial Code allows the PM to judge whether he is following the rules or not. Caroline Lucas said that type of parliamentary rule does not work and it brings democracy into contempt.