Opinion

Newton Emerson: We are entering a Trumpian world where we can expect political lying on a larger scale

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson writes a twice-weekly column for The Irish News and is a regular commentator on current affairs on radio and television.

The world has changed since the BBC's Yes Minister, where politicians and officials stopped short of bare-faced lying
The world has changed since the BBC's Yes Minister, where politicians and officials stopped short of bare-faced lying The world has changed since the BBC's Yes Minister, where politicians and officials stopped short of bare-faced lying

Sinn Féin has been accused by southern rivals of “Trump-style” politics for organising public meetings - a bizarre misunderstanding of how the world has changed.

The real transformation of politics brought to the US by President Donald Trump and now to us by Prime Minister Boris Johnson is to render words meaningless.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil still live in the world best explained by Yes Minister, where politicians and officials might cynically set out to mislead but would rarely recourse in the first instance to just telling bare-faced lies.

They would always at least attempt to couch their words in clever elisions, open to interpretation and able to be presented in retrospect as meaning something different.

Northern Ireland retains almost quaintly Yes Minister politics. The constructive ambiguity of the peace process could be said to have made it our constitution. Even Sinn Fein, a stranger to the truth as many would understand it, usually makes some effort to be gnomic or poetic while claiming black is white.

The DUP is a more traditional Sir Humphrey, spinning the jots and tittles to be accountable but not responsible. Although politicians and officials at Stormont do say things that are blatantly untrue, then try to cover themselves with laughable transparent excuses, this still demonstrates some embarrassment at the thought of being caught.

Journalists love the Yes Minister world. It is an enormously satisfying puzzle to tease out and explain the difference between what was said and what was meant. It flatters the media to think it is in a sophisticated game of wits with the powers that be.

Newspapers and broadcasters are loathe to call anyone a liar, not just because it is defamatory and requires conclusive proof, but because it seems amateurish to present politics as so simple. The skill of the politician has been about not telling direct lies and the profession of the political reporter has been about cutting through the misdirection. There is confusion, verging on mourning, in the American and British media at the death of this charming parlour game. Channel 4 News Director Dorothy Bryne caused consternation at the Edinburgh TV festival last August when she said Johnson’s arrival in Downing Street meant journalists must start calling politicians liars. To much of her audience, it felt like a surrender to the Trumpian age.

Where that age has entered our politics is via the Northern Ireland Office, once a bastion of careful obfuscation, now potentially Johnson’s megaphone of mendacity.

The NIO has responsibility for security, intelligence and dealing with the legacy of the Troubles. Secretaries of state speak for Downing Street on Brexit and hold the power to call a border poll. The NIO will dictate the key debates of the coming decade, throughout which Johnson will quite likely remain in office.

Outgoing secretary of state Julian Smith flatly contradicted Johnson on whether the cabinet had been briefed on the Stormont House legacy proposals. We knew where we stood with Smith. His successor, Brandon Lewis, appears to be a Yes Minister man wrestling with loyalty to a Trumpian boss.

Lewis has focused on two messages since arriving in Northern Ireland. On legacy, he says the Stormont House mechanisms will be implemented but there will be no “vexatious” prosecutions. On Brexit, he says there will be no sea border. There is a fairly straightforward pathway for his legacy statements to be true. His Brexit claim is an ominous mystery.

Stormont House can be implemented without vexatious prosecutions because Johnson has defined ‘vexatious’ in the House of Commons as prosecutions without new evidence. Stormont House always required new evidence for prosecutions. It is sub-Sir Humphrey trickery but not a lie, or not a lie yet. On a visit to Derry this week, Brandon clung rather desperately to the official line and to his honour, repeatedly telling reporters there will be full legacy mechanisms, no vexatious prosecutions and “the prime minister has been very clear.”

Brexit is a murkier affair. Is London really planning to renege on the withdrawal agreement or are unionists just being lied to, again?

The media cannot believe the government would lie to Brussels on this scale and is reporting a hunt for legal loopholes in the agreement.

No doubt text and statements can be found to suggest a sea border is not a border, checks are not fetters and commitments to the EU are conditional.

But perhaps that is just playing the old game.