Does truth matter in this general election?

The PM told the debate that he thought it did – but the evidence may suggest otherwise, writes John Rentoul

Johnson is far from the first prime minister to make wide-of-the-mark claims (ITV/Getty)

One of the telling moments in the TV debate came when Julie Etchingham, the presenter, asked a question: “Does the truth matter in this election?” The prime minister said: “I think it does.” And the studio audience laughed.

It is a theme of politics today that Boris Johnson has an unusually loose relationship with the truth – he is often compared to Donald Trump as an exemplar of something quite different from what used to be expected of leaders.

The Conservatives didn’t help themselves when, at about the same time that the studio audience was mocking their leader, their press office rebranded its Twitter account as factcheckUK – a bogus service dedicated to holding Jeremy Corbyn to account for any untrue claims made during the debate.

So did Tuesday night mark a new low for truth in British politics? I think the answer is partly yes but mostly no. I would say Johnson is a bit different from most politicians in that he is happy to make promises with no idea whether he can deliver them. Most notably, he said he would take Britain out of the EU “come what may” on 31 October – a pledge he first made at an event in Switzerland before the Tory leadership campaign had even started, and which I assumed was a slip of the tongue.

Before that he was responsible for the £350m on the side of the bus, and since then he has said there would be no paperwork for goods shipped from Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK under his Brexit deal.

This might be called symbolic language: Johnson has largely avoided criticism from Leavers for his failure to deliver Brexit at the end of October, because his promise was more a declaration of intent than a bankable commitment. Leavers were happy to blame a Remainer parliament for blocking the prime minister’s sincere attempt to “get Brexit done”.

This is a bit different from the behaviour of President Trump, who seems to just make up facts that suit his world view. And I think the difference between Johnson and most British politicians is one of degree rather than kind. After all, it was Tony Blair who claimed in the 1997 election that the Conservatives intended to abolish the state pension, which was quite untrue and irresponsibly frightened a lot of older people.

As for the Tory press office’s clever idea of calling itself factcheckUK, that seemed to have been an ill-judged stunt which backfired. Instead of journalists following up its claim that Jeremy Corbyn was wrong to say Labour had “investigated every single case” of alleged antisemitism, for example, they spent the whole of yesterday engaged in a hysterical hoopla about the Tories passing themselves off as an independent fact-checking organisation.

Political parties have always engaged in claim and counter-claim; and more intensely during election campaigns. Most of this is nothing new. But some politicians, and some parties, make things harder for themselves.

After the TV debate in Salford, several Conservative staff adjourned to a cocktail bar called The Liars Club in Manchester.