[Robin McAlpine Blog] When did lying become normal?

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When did lying become normal?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Sorites Paradox, although in my head I wasn’t calling it that. A Sorites Paradox comes from a thought experiment where you have a ‘heap’ of stand and then you start taking grains of sand away individually. When there is only one grain left, no-one would call it a ‘heap’ any more. But when was that threshold crossed?

That is what has been on my mind throughout the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital scandal. It’s not that I’m surprised that they now appear to be saying the opposite of what they said before despite the facts not changing because I didn’t believe them in the first place. It’s that I got surprised I’m not surprised.

It opened up a very specific question for me – when did this happen? At what point did I shift from routinely believing what public officials told me (though allowing for spin, cherry-picking and exaggeration) to routinely not believing public officials?

It was some time before Covid, because by the time that Public Health Scotland was putting out false data the only purpose of which was to make the then-First Minister look good I was barely surprised. I was reading something, my head was screaming ‘that can’t be right’ and I just knew it wasn’t (in this case claiming that sending Covid-positive patients to care homes had not resulted in additional infection, a claim later withdrawn).

So let’s go to the other end, my earliest memories of politics. Those are from the 1980s. I’m not sure if I exactly believed Margaret Thatcher back then but I almost certainly didn’t assume that she was telling outright lies.

Moreover, that was the Yes Minister era too – it was famously about how to bend rules as far as they can be bent short of things like outright lying or illegality. We expected politicians to play fast and loose with truth in terms of exaggeration and over-statement, but outright lies were rare and I always felt that an official would be along later with a more reliable version of the story.

It was clear to me at the time that the health board had come under pressure to open the QEUH on time whether it was ready or not, it seemed overwhelmingly likely that the deaths attributed to poor water systems were caused by exactly that despite the denials, and so I assumed that the health boards denials that this was the case were only temporary and would be superseded when they had no room left to fib.

Which means that thereafter when the politician said they didn’t know, I didn’t believe them either and then when health board officials send letters saying that X is true and the only purpose of X is to protect their paymasters, I assume that X is also a knowing falsehood.

Gilding the political lilly is so out of hand these days that the moment when exaggeration turning into routine misleading isn’t entirely obvious to me

That is a pretty shocking and toxic set of circumstances, and I didn’t use to feel like this about the public realm. I write that even though I grew up with the Battle of Orgraeve on the telly and the terminally slow unwinding of the lies and deceit that took place in the aftermath of Hillsborough.

But those were big, massive events which some would see falling into the category of ‘national security’ and when I hear those words I then believe virtually none of what I’m told at face value. It was always the case that even the most liberal parts of the establishment tolerated and sometimes celebrated dishonesty when it came to national security.

Still, in the day to day affairs of government I didn’t feel like this, and I want to know when it started. There is an argument that says it was all downhill after Bernard Ingham who during the Thatcher era turned public communication from being a more staid official-led business and into the era of political spin that followed.

But it really wasn’t until this was accelerated under New Labour that I became more conscious of it. At first it was that perennial favourite the intentional and dishonest double-counting in budget announcements. It is now routinely believed that you need to wait days after a budget until someone or other has untangled all the bits and pieces of spin.

Was that always the case? I don’t remember it being like that, but I was young so perhaps that’s a perception issue. Likewise, gilding the political lilly is so out of hand these days that the moment when exaggeration turning into routine misleading isn’t entirely obvious to me.

Most certainly that doubt was no longer vague by the time we got into the world of lies around the Iraq War. Indeed it may be that ‘we create our own reality’ era of post-Cold War impunity that this really blew up. I am not alone in being sceptical about anything politicians say after the blatantness of the lies around Iraq.

Mind you, around that time I would have placed Scotland as comfortably less dishonest than Westminster. Those were still the early days of devolution and there seemed to be a lot of trust around. I don’t remember it being broken that often.

Take two examples of SQA crises. I was very closely involved in the 2000 crisis where poor administration led to a meltdown of the exams system. It was a real crisis, but I wrack my brains and cannot come up with any memory of anyone actually lying about it. In fact there was a reassuringly high degree of honesty from where I was.

But jump forward 20 years to another SQA crisis (Covid exam marking) and by this point I absolutely do not believe that the SQA was operating with full candour. In fact I know it wasn’t.

Sure it’s the culture, but it is the culture that was created and sustained by the actions of individual people

Whatever happened happened in that time window. So was it the SNP? Did things take a nosedive in 2007 when they took power? I can’t really come up with evidence of that. The Salmond administration was bolshie, headstrong and not averse to over statement, but I don’t remember it being particularly dishonest.

I mean, think of the referendum where Salmond was dragged over hot coals for overstating the extent to which he had taken proper policy advice on the issue of Europe. A few years later that kind of vainglorious boasting divorced from sustainable reality was hardly rare.

So was it Sturgeon? It would be too easy to solely blame her because you’ve got to remember that at the same time you had Boris Johnstone so it is impossible to argue that this was an issue related to Scotland alone.

And yet, symbolically, I still feel that the launch of a ferry whose windows were painted on was some kind of a rubicon crossed. Is launching a ship that is nowhere near seaworthy an honest act? I think not. For Sturgeon spin and reality seemed to merge.

In fact she should have been pulled up for it an awful lot more than she was. I suspect that the media simply hadn’t counted how many grains of sand had been removed from the ‘heap’ at this point and were still calling it a heap.

But by the time we get to the Salmond Affair I don’t think there was much pretence of real honestly left. The official story of ‘what happened’ is to this day literally beyond belief. It almost felt that the dishonesty problem was so out of hand that the only way to cover up the dishonesty was redactions.

And that is the truth; I can give you a solid sense of ‘before’ and I can very much tell you what is wrong now, but precisely when one state shifted into the other? I don’t know exactly. I can’t pin it on a single person and find myself wanting to reach of ‘it’s the culture’ explanations.

But that isn’t enough. Sure it’s the culture, but it is the culture that was created and sustained by the actions of individual people. Some of it is out of control, overly-powerful officials who’ve learned that they can fuck up, tell lies and still be protected. Some of it is the culture of boastful politics which came to define government in Scotland over the last decade.

What isn’t in doubt is that the trust problem is real and that it’s effects are corrosive. I am absolutely certain that Nicola Sturgeon and probably also John Swinney put pressure on the hospital to open early, I am certain the hospital lied about the outcomes and I’m pretty sure the politicians knew they were lying and were happy to let them.

And I could be wrong about any of this, but once you’ve crossed a line where you don’t trust institutions and dishonesty is assumed, it’s too late. Lying has become a routine aspect of public life in Scotland and now that it has we have good reason not to believe anything. And that’s a disaster.

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