TLDR at the end I just post how I propose to convince the new parliament.
If polling is anything near to close. Starmer will enter parlimemt on the 5th with a landslide majority.
Time for us to remember the court case PM Johnson won for the 350m lie on a bus. The high Court simply stated.
Parliment has made no law banning lies during a campaign.
Well we really do have an opportunity to convince Starmer to change that. With Sunak and Co clearly following the last elections lead. Lieing about the civil service backing up their cost estimates.
It is time parliment tried to build confidence in election claims. This would only be practical when it comes to provable falsehoods of fact. Such as the claims made about Starmers campaign. After they have been informed the civil service did not analyse the data they used.
Unfortunately forcing a party to follow its manifesto is not really doable. And if parliment made the law. The next parliment would cancel it.
How to convince Starmer et al
OK so most will remember back in the coalition. The new government claimed to want to be responsive. So they set up an official, way for the public to request parliment do things. Resulting in parliment responding with crappy excuses every single time 10k signatures. Or a dumb argument in committee at 100k.
Now consider a new majority land slide parliment. Walking into government on July the 5th. With a social media publicised request to make it illegal for election campaigns, to continue to publish claims known to be false.
Its a simple law. If your party has received evidence that your clai is false. You must stop using it or face legal punishment.
So assuming 10k votes. The new government would need to write a response claiming they think lieing is OK.
Pretty sure the electorate can eviserate them on social media after that. Changing their mind. The new tory opposition leader. (Or Lib Dem maybe?). Would sure as he’ll leap on the new government for such a claim.
But honestly to get the response needed. 100k signatures and the parliment required to have a public committee debate on their right to lie in campaigns.
No new government with a huge majority is going to be willing to face that.
Help
If you have read this far. You will recognise, I am not great at grammar and my wording is not consise. So when it comes to writing the partition on the parliment website. Someone more skilled would be best. Or a discussion here as to the best wording etc.
Do please if this idea seem worth while. (Let’s face it what have we to lose. A few mins a day signing a partition and posting to social media over the election. )
Then please join a discussion here. To try to push this idea forward over the next month.
I agree this needs to be tackled, but I have a few thoughts.
What we saw with Johnson, et al, is that our system does not have protections in place against bad actors. All processes presume people are honourable. This is one of the main reasons why you cannot accuse another MP of lying in the Commons, but you can disagree, debate, bring other evidence, explain why their reasoning is wrong, etc.
That may sound like symantics, but lying isn’t the same as being wrong. Lying is when you know what you are saying is false, and you say it anyway.
And because things are less black and white than we’d like - especially in politics and economics, neither of which are hard science - you have a pretty big grey area where good faith research can show very different outcomes.
As such you’d need a burden of proof that is very pretty high, because you’d need to prove the person saying X knew it was false. If it isn’t high enough, then it would absolutely be abused by bad actors commissioning biased research to compel their opposition to stop saying X.
The 350m example, and Sunak’s 2k one, are both clearly lies. In the first case we literally didn’t send the money, and in the second the Civil Service had already told ministers privately the figures were not reliable.
Having these two examples being criminally prosecutable would absolutely be an improvement on our current postion, and waiting for perfect is worse than a step forward, but we’d need to be very very careful to not bring in legislation that can be abused by bad actors to silence legitimate opposition.
Again this is why I feel I need help in wording the partition.
Honestly the 350m bus lie was never going to be proven illegal. Even if a law like this existed.
We did send 350m to the EU. So it was just a claim about what we can do with it. As the savings not existing is a claim about future actions. Nothing will ever proove it was a lie. Because the facts to proove the new world would not have it. Can always be changed.
It like me telling you if you jump of a building you won’t die. Of course most would say I am lieing. But their are so many things that could happen in the future. And no way of prooving what I know of the actions around me.
How can you proove I did not know there will be a fire man with a inflatable arriving before you jump.
But if I tell your lover you jumped and did not die. Things are very different.
And that is where sunak was different.
If he told parliment labour will cast 2k in tax would not be a lie, just a very very questionable claim. If starmer jumped of the building he’d survive like claim. He is making assumptions no one can clai is false. Only that voters wou.d be stupid accept it.
But when he claimed the treasury supported the claim. If he had done that in parliment he would have faced parliamentary punishment. As pathetic as it has been. Technically they could jail him but would not.
Because not only dose he know his party did not provide the same data to the treasury. He has been informed by the treasury before the debate. (We know this as the treasury informed Labour. And their non political civil service code required them to inform the tories as we. )
So the seriose risk is different to BJs bus.
In court while he was not convinced because the court said parliment had made no law. If parliment had then he likely would still be found not guilty.
Rushing Sunk looked at this differently.mhe knowingly and is evidenced to have told an out right lie about the treasurys actions. Not the actual 2kmthat is without the lie. Just an opinion.
And he did this the very first election where he saw court president stating no law existed.
But here’s the thing, we literally didn’t, even the treasury confirmed it
https://fullfact.org/europe/membership-fee-eu/
Yeah but again its a matter of wording. The EU bill was 350m.
The bus lacked the extra information of.
Discounts, the value we get from it. Amd a whole list of other data making it false.
But as far as law is concerned saying 350m is a lie is ecvide ceded by the invoice. The fact other data was missing. Well yours and my mum would def call it a lie. And likely take a be,t to me in my time. Not sure your age. But the law less so they tend to have much more evidenced requirements for a falsehood the not admitting data.
Still utter scum. But not likely what we can demand a law to cover.
Rishi Sunk said something very very different.
The bill was 350m in the same way that the bill for a meal deal is >3.50, until the discount is applied.
When you pay, tesco don’t take all the money then give you a refund as two separate transactions, they apply the discount first, and you pay that price instead.
Telling people a meal deal costs 4.12 or whatever is the same claim, which is a clear lie.
Sorry this gets long. Please bare with it is why I am asking for help.
Yes. But as I say lies yours and my mum will disapprove of. And ones a court will consider provable are very different.
I am honestly trying to address the issue in a way that will not be trashed by politics in general. And societal attitudes of if its to hard don’t bother.
The simple fact is trying to stop Boris bus like lies. Is to hard for the public to attempt atm. We sure as hell are not going to form a viable agreed strategy in time to effect the fist 100 days. And honestly I think that is really important to move things in the right direction.
Risky Sunk is another matter all together. Not only because his lie is unquestionable as a lie. No argument can convince anyone that the treasury supported his claims as published. Even the most liberal court in the UK would have no choice but to agree the following points.
It was false under any interpretation. The treasury claims they had informed MPs is provable. Sunak and or his campaigners had the ability to prevent the lie before the debate.
This sort of thing no one can really claim we are unable to stop, Just take forcing parliament to pull its dangles out of the gravy boat.
So I am not saying the bus was not a lie. Of course it was. It is just the sort of lie no court can really prove beyond reasonable doubt. So even if we convince parliament the law needs to exist. It will be limited in its ability to effect such claims.
But we can make the likes of BJs campaigns way more careful with their claims. By addressing the much much more dangerous attempt by Rishi.
First is is more dangerous because the status of the treasury was used to reduce the effectiveness of fact checking. Lets face it Boris Bus was very much addressed. Fact checkers trashed it instantly. And we spent most of the election pointing it out.
Unfortunately convincing the faithful, of something they dont want. Can be impossible. Brexiters as a group knew it was a lie. Did not care. And just stated that the claims about economic bankruptcy were based on similar false accounting. As dumb as that logic is. Some remainers predicting it the second we voted was asking for the response.
But Rishi Told a lie that was aimed (in my unhumble opinion) to instantly make the non faithful question the accuracy of fact checkers.
He has known for the whole election cycle. That his faithful are reduced to a minority. So if he wants the level of support for a lie Johnson had. He needs to make every day voters question the bias of fact checker.
The treasury and civil servants in general (my ex was one) have a rule to not express political opinions on the job. They can lose their job or face demotions for failing to follow this. But more importantly is the time. During an election solution of parliament. Where the only ministers around working civil servants are incumbent ministers fighting for their job.
It is more then a rule. It is a mandate and the whole purpose of having civil servants rather then political appointments run the ministries. Their whole job purpose is to remain independent and make no changes to policy during the kings dissolution of parliamentary authority.
When people with this mandate are claimed to support the facts the Tory scum are exposing. It would naturally effect lots of undecided or even opposition decided voters that the independent fact checkers are the ones that lied.
Now here the media worked well. Once the labour party had announced a letter from the treasury leader. The media pounced on it. Fortunately I dont punish myself with GB news or the daily mail. But will guess they STFU rather then tried to claim the treasury letter is false. And we also know their is no way the civil service will contact the media themselves to express a political opinion. So trustworthy media really was the only thing that limited this harm.
So please anyone reading this remember that last sentence. Trustworthy media is the only thing that stopped Risky Sunk winning the fight over this very risky lie. Our history with the UK media makes it clear. This is not a situation that we can risk becoming common during any election period.