POLITICS: THE ROAD TO LUXURY

It is amazing the way football fans rose up in their angry millions to squash the idea of the Super League. It demonstrated that for the mega-rich and politicians, sport exists as a much-appreciated diversion from the real world which they greedily govern and manipulate. However, beyond the so-called ‘beautiful game’, there is much to be angry about, yet Joe Public, fed daily on an increasing diet of deliberate lies, remains comparatively silent.

After four foul-smelling years of Donald Trump’s ‘alternative facts’ one might expect the people of Britain to realize that the mendacity which spewed from the White House could never have traction here. To use a sporting cliché, that ‘wouldn’t be cricket’. But who cares?

We have a Prime Minister who appears not to know how many children he has. He lied when he told us £350 million was paid to the EU every week. He too used football to create his own aura of controversy. In 2003 as a columnist for the Spectator, he was forced to apologise for falsely blaming drunken Liverpool fans for the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, and rubbed salt in that untruth suggesting Liverpool fans were wallowing in their victim status. In the same publication he made up stories with allegations that the EU intended legislation on the shape of bananas, that they were banning prawn cocktail crisps and had plans to introduce same-size “eurocoffins”. He falsely suggested that Turkey was to join the EU, insinuating 80 million Turks could arrive on our shores and cripple our NHS. He waved a vacuum-packed kipper at the Tory Party conference and blamed its packaging on EU regulations as opposed to the truth – they were UK regulations. The ‘fact’ is that he’s in power because the UK public think of him as ‘a character’, a political version of ‘Del Boy’ Trotter, a bit of a lad. That’s why everyone calls him ‘Boris’, rather than the more respectful ‘Mr. Johnson’. He idolizes Churchill, who in reality would have chewed him up and spit him out in disgust.

Politics based on lies is by no means new. 500 years ago, Niccolò Machiavelli wrote in his masterpiece The Prince that in political communication, manipulation, callousness and indifference to morality are the road to success. Politics, he wrote, requires ’inhuman cruelty’. Well, we’re certainly receiving plenty of that.

So, if you’re good at making things up, politics might be for you. Remember, it could get you a Baby Bear Sofa for £19,950, an Owl lampshade costing £11,600, a Venus chair, £5,900 and Dianthus wallpaper at only £840 per roll. As Boris reclines on his new sofa, he can relax like Mussolini, Trump and Goebbels. They all knew that lies were the route to luxury.