Brexit, and the return of political lying

Sir John Chilcot’s report into the Iraq invasion, due to be published on 6 July, is expected to highlight the novel structure of government created by New Labour following its landslide victory of 1997. As Tony Blair started to make the case for war, he began to distort the shape and nature of British government in several ways — the most notable being the deliberate debasement of the traditional idea of a neutral, disinterested civil service.

Under Blair, civil servants were told to concern themselves less with the substance than the presentation of policy. They were informed that their loyalty lay more with the government of the day, less with the British state. This had dramatic effects. Some officials (especially the ambitious ones) abandoned the Whitehall tradition of caution, astringency and integrity. They ceased to treat information as neutral and value-free. Instead, facts became malle-able building blocks towards the creation of a wider ‘narrative’ to be discarded or rearranged to fit the requirements of the party in power.