LONDON — This is the dejection election. Not in my lifetime has Britain faced such a miserable choice. Two vain, incompetent, mediocre charlatans are competing to become prime minister. For the Conservatives, we have the blustering, lying, oafish puffball Boris Johnson. In the Labour corner is the querulous, wooden, sanctimonious Jeremy Corbyn.
The two candidates are so alarming that, in an unprecedented intervention, former prime ministers from each of their parties have pleaded with voters to block them. Tony Blair and John Major have urged tactical votes against Mr. Corbyn and Mr. Johnson. Everywhere, exhausted, disillusioned, skeptical voters debate who is worse. British politics has never known anything like it.
These very different men share remarkable, unflattering similarities. Each is ill briefed, hazy on the facts and implications of his policy proposals, uneasy under scrutiny and belligerent when challenged.
Both are promising rank impossibilities. Mr. Johnson tells voters he can deliver Brexit, quickly and painlessly, if they give him a majority. Mr. Corbyn claims it’s possible to drastically transform the economy for ordinary people in five years, raising productivity and living standards, ending tuition fees and nationalizing rail, water and energy — all paid for just by modestly raising taxes for businesses and top earners.
Neither man is telling the truth. Both are addressing real, acute problems — Britain’s stagnant, unequal economy and people’s sense of powerlessness and dislocation — with consoling fantasies.
Mr. Corbyn may believe, delusional though it is, that he really can restructure British capitalism overnight without damaging the economy. His stubborn moral certainty means he’s deceiving himself along with everybody else. Most politicians, of course, have ambitions beyond their competence and dreams they can’t deliver.
Mr. Johnson is playing another game entirely. Amoral and power-hungry, he’s lying with knowledge, calculation and abandon. He and his advisers have made a ruthless and sinister decision — to subvert and smash up British political culture. They have learned from the successes of the Vote Leave campaign, which Mr. Johnson fronted, and, it seems, from Team Trump.
The old assumptions — that truth matters, that lies shame the liar, that in a democracy the press and the public must have a right to interrogate those who seek the top jobs — have all been swept aside by the Tories’ conviction that in an inattentive, dissatisfied, cacophonous world, victory will go to the most compelling entertainer, the most plausible and shameless deceiver, the leader who can drill home a repetitive and seductive incantation. Facts and details will be irrelevant so long as voters feel a politician is on their side.
This strategy has hit British politics like a tornado and has left broadcasters, the opposition, commentators and voters who care about veracity floundering. Mr. Johnson and his ministers have lied fluently and persistently about everything from their fundamental and fake promise to the electorate — that Brexit can be brought to a swift, neat end by him — to its damage to jobs, its impact on Northern Ireland, the ease of new trade deals and the number of new hospitals and nurses the Tories will fund.
It gets even more shameless. The Tories falsely recut a video of an opposition politician. They brazenly rebranded their Twitter account as a fact-checking site during a crucial political debate. They persistently claim that the election had to be called because Parliament had blocked Mr. Johnson’s Brexit deal and voted down his program for government, both of which are false.
Mr. Johnson is not being exposed or embarrassed by his lies because the flood of them is overwhelming, because Britain’s powerful right-wing press is backing him and because he’s dodging any format that could sustain a challenge to him. He has skipped public questioning in favor of carefully constructed photo-ops. He has refused tough interrogations, wriggling out of a slot with the BBC’s most rigorous interviewer.
Mr. Johnson’s team has seized upon a terrifying truth: that the old media, particularly the broadcasters, and the establishment that has decided its rules of operation, are no longer the gatekeepers to communication. Cunning politicians can skip accountability, and British broadcasting’s rules on impartiality and balance, by going straight for the voters’ emotional jugular. In place of public and professional scrutiny there’s Twitter and Facebook, where millions of micro-targeted messages are flooding key voters.
These focused, ferocious evasions of democracy’s conventions and protections appear to be working. The Tories are ahead in the polls and apparently heading for a majority, though the race is tightening and the polls could be wrong. Voters in focus groups parrot Mr. Johnson’s slogans. If the Tories win, they’ll shrug off critics; the demos has approved their tactics.
I dread how a Tory victory would embolden Mr. Johnson and his strategists. Already they are threatening the futures of broadcasters who embarrass them. Already their manifesto promises to look again at the relationships among Parliament, the government and the courts, which is code for: We intend to emasculate anything that constrains us. Given greater power, they will seize more.
I wish for both of these reckless men to lose. A Johnson majority would be petrifying because his lying, bullying and dodging mean Britain has no clue what his real plans for Brexit are. The European Union has made clear he cannot reach a comprehensive trade deal with it within a year, as he claims. We could be in another crisis next December as Mr. Johnson tips us out of our current deals into the coldest, hardest Brexit there is.
Mr. Corbyn cannot win outright, and I would fear his free rein. The least worst result would be a hung Parliament: no party with a majority, but where Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party could combine just long enough to hold a second referendum on Brexit, which might yield a vote to remain.
Nothing can unite this rived country, but that could rebuild it. It is a slight and improbable prospect. I fear for Britain’s future.
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Home » Analysis & Comment » Opinion | Britain’s Miserable Election
Opinion | Britain’s Miserable Election
LONDON — This is the dejection election. Not in my lifetime has Britain faced such a miserable choice. Two vain, incompetent, mediocre charlatans are competing to become prime minister. For the Conservatives, we have the blustering, lying, oafish puffball Boris Johnson. In the Labour corner is the querulous, wooden, sanctimonious Jeremy Corbyn.
The two candidates are so alarming that, in an unprecedented intervention, former prime ministers from each of their parties have pleaded with voters to block them. Tony Blair and John Major have urged tactical votes against Mr. Corbyn and Mr. Johnson. Everywhere, exhausted, disillusioned, skeptical voters debate who is worse. British politics has never known anything like it.
These very different men share remarkable, unflattering similarities. Each is ill briefed, hazy on the facts and implications of his policy proposals, uneasy under scrutiny and belligerent when challenged.
Both are promising rank impossibilities. Mr. Johnson tells voters he can deliver Brexit, quickly and painlessly, if they give him a majority. Mr. Corbyn claims it’s possible to drastically transform the economy for ordinary people in five years, raising productivity and living standards, ending tuition fees and nationalizing rail, water and energy — all paid for just by modestly raising taxes for businesses and top earners.
Neither man is telling the truth. Both are addressing real, acute problems — Britain’s stagnant, unequal economy and people’s sense of powerlessness and dislocation — with consoling fantasies.
Mr. Corbyn may believe, delusional though it is, that he really can restructure British capitalism overnight without damaging the economy. His stubborn moral certainty means he’s deceiving himself along with everybody else. Most politicians, of course, have ambitions beyond their competence and dreams they can’t deliver.
Mr. Johnson is playing another game entirely. Amoral and power-hungry, he’s lying with knowledge, calculation and abandon. He and his advisers have made a ruthless and sinister decision — to subvert and smash up British political culture. They have learned from the successes of the Vote Leave campaign, which Mr. Johnson fronted, and, it seems, from Team Trump.
The old assumptions — that truth matters, that lies shame the liar, that in a democracy the press and the public must have a right to interrogate those who seek the top jobs — have all been swept aside by the Tories’ conviction that in an inattentive, dissatisfied, cacophonous world, victory will go to the most compelling entertainer, the most plausible and shameless deceiver, the leader who can drill home a repetitive and seductive incantation. Facts and details will be irrelevant so long as voters feel a politician is on their side.
This strategy has hit British politics like a tornado and has left broadcasters, the opposition, commentators and voters who care about veracity floundering. Mr. Johnson and his ministers have lied fluently and persistently about everything from their fundamental and fake promise to the electorate — that Brexit can be brought to a swift, neat end by him — to its damage to jobs, its impact on Northern Ireland, the ease of new trade deals and the number of new hospitals and nurses the Tories will fund.
It gets even more shameless. The Tories falsely recut a video of an opposition politician. They brazenly rebranded their Twitter account as a fact-checking site during a crucial political debate. They persistently claim that the election had to be called because Parliament had blocked Mr. Johnson’s Brexit deal and voted down his program for government, both of which are false.
Mr. Johnson is not being exposed or embarrassed by his lies because the flood of them is overwhelming, because Britain’s powerful right-wing press is backing him and because he’s dodging any format that could sustain a challenge to him. He has skipped public questioning in favor of carefully constructed photo-ops. He has refused tough interrogations, wriggling out of a slot with the BBC’s most rigorous interviewer.
Mr. Johnson’s team has seized upon a terrifying truth: that the old media, particularly the broadcasters, and the establishment that has decided its rules of operation, are no longer the gatekeepers to communication. Cunning politicians can skip accountability, and British broadcasting’s rules on impartiality and balance, by going straight for the voters’ emotional jugular. In place of public and professional scrutiny there’s Twitter and Facebook, where millions of micro-targeted messages are flooding key voters.
These focused, ferocious evasions of democracy’s conventions and protections appear to be working. The Tories are ahead in the polls and apparently heading for a majority, though the race is tightening and the polls could be wrong. Voters in focus groups parrot Mr. Johnson’s slogans. If the Tories win, they’ll shrug off critics; the demos has approved their tactics.
I dread how a Tory victory would embolden Mr. Johnson and his strategists. Already they are threatening the futures of broadcasters who embarrass them. Already their manifesto promises to look again at the relationships among Parliament, the government and the courts, which is code for: We intend to emasculate anything that constrains us. Given greater power, they will seize more.
I wish for both of these reckless men to lose. A Johnson majority would be petrifying because his lying, bullying and dodging mean Britain has no clue what his real plans for Brexit are. The European Union has made clear he cannot reach a comprehensive trade deal with it within a year, as he claims. We could be in another crisis next December as Mr. Johnson tips us out of our current deals into the coldest, hardest Brexit there is.
Mr. Corbyn cannot win outright, and I would fear his free rein. The least worst result would be a hung Parliament: no party with a majority, but where Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party could combine just long enough to hold a second referendum on Brexit, which might yield a vote to remain.
Nothing can unite this rived country, but that could rebuild it. It is a slight and improbable prospect. I fear for Britain’s future.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
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