“Lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings,” wrote the philosopher Hannah Arendt. That’s not true in Wales, though, where the Senedd is considering a law to bar politicians from office if they lie.
If passed, the world-first law would mean anyone “found guilty of deliberate lying” would be disqualified from being a member of, or standing for, the Senedd. But the law “would not apply to matters of belief, opinion, or simple misunderstanding”, said The i Paper.
What did the commentators say?
In these times when trust in politicians has “fallen to an all-time low”, this legislation would “restore and rebuild and maintain that trust in democracy”, said Adam Price of Plaid Cymru, when he proposed the law last year.
But “defining a lie, in a political context, is challenging”, said Juliet Swann of Transparency International UK. “Politics is built on word play” and subjective interpretations of fact, which makes it extremely difficult to prove that someone is being intentionally misleading – and to write a law that provides “for different interpretations, based on political affiliation, seems nigh on impossible”.
In any case, “a ban on strictly demonstrable lies would not transform a culture of political dishonesty”, said The Critic‘s Ben Sixsmith. There’s a pervading disingenuousness that “is much deeper and more invasive”.
And then you have to take into account that elected officials are often reliant on their support teams for information. “Would it be feasible to expect every politician to fact-check every statement before they make it?” said The Spectator‘s Chas Newkey-Burden. “It would be hard to establish who is responsible for any given deception.”
And the consequent struggle to secure a conviction could also, ironically, make collapsing public trust even worse, “How many failed prosecutions of lying MPs would it take before distrust deepened?”
But “if lying can be prohibited in a whole range of other professions”, said Jennifer Nadel in Byline Times, “why is it not possible to prohibit it in politics? Of course it is.”
In the end, politicians lie “because they believe they’ll score more points than they’ll lose”, said Bill Adair in The Atlantic. To change that, there needs to be a broader societal change, buoyed by fact-checkers and tech platforms and people “caring about lies, even when their candidate is the culprit”.
What next?
Members of the Senedd have expressed hope that the law would combat the “‘existential threat’ that lying in politics poses to democracy”, said The Guardian.
But The Senedd’s Standards of Conduct Committee, which the government asked to look at the proposed legislation, has concluded that “members who lie on purpose should not be criminalised”, said Sky News. Instead, it recommended “strengthening existing procedures” in the Senedd, and “making it an offence for election candidates to make any deliberately deceptive statements”.
The risks of the new legislation, said the committee, “outweigh the benefits”, due to the “difficulties of proving that a statement is false”.