From fake websites to unanswered questions, this might be the most dishonest election in modern times “The political norm around lying has broken down”

Is truth the first casualty of this general election? It certainly seems as if the need for fact-checking in British politics has never been so acute – particularly when the governing party presents itself for an hour on Twitter as one of those independent fact-checking organisations.

The Conservatives’ rebranding of its social media account as “factcheckUK” during Tuesday night’s ITV debate is being portrayed as a new low in UK politics.

Twitter is awash with fake accounts and disinformation presented as cold, hard facts – what was disturbing was that it had come from the political party on course to win a majority and hand more power to Boris Johnson on 12 December.

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Even though the name change was only in place for an hour, the Tories have doubled down on this strategy. They have set up a website, www.labourmanifesto.co.uk, which claims the “cost of Corbyn” amounts to £2,400 extra per person a year.

Widely disputed Tory dossier

This figure comes from a widely disputed Tory dossier which claims Labour’s spending plans will cost the country £1.2trn over the next five years.

Mr Johnson and his ministers continue to claim they are planning to build 40 new hospitals – but this figure has been debunked by both the BBC’s Reality Check and fullfact.org, who say that only six will be new, while the others are existing hospital trusts which will have a share of money to start working on new projects.

It is not just the Conservatives who are failing to give voters the full picture: Labour’s weak spot at this election is Jeremy Corbyn’s refusal to say which side he would campaign for in a second EU referendum implemented by a Labour government.

This is not a straight up lie, but it is shielding from voters a major decision that will shape the UK’s future. It is not being honest with voters. And during the ITV debate Mr Corbyn said his party had investigated every case of antisemitism in its ranks, yet the Jewish Labour Movement pointed out that there are more than 130 outstanding cases.

Similarly, are the Lib Dems being up front with the electorate when Jo Swinson started their campaign saying she was running to be Prime Minister and now the party’s Treasury spokesman, Ed Davey, says they could work with a Tory minority government “issue by issue”?

Journalists criticised for questioning untruths

The journalist Peter Oborne, who keeps a dossier of political lies, says the media are just as guilty in failing to call out these untruths and lack of transparency. Yet journalists are scrutinising the claims of political parties – and are criticised for doing so. When Channel 4 journalist Ciaran Jenkins tried to ask Michael Gove about the disputed 40 new hospitals policy earlier this week, Mr Gove accused him of “mounting a rigorous left-wing case for a particular point of view”.

Dishonesty in politics – or, as Alan Clark once described it, being economical with the actualité – is nothing new: the faked Zinoviev letter, which claimed that the head of the Communist Party in Moscow wanted to see the election of a Labour government, was run by the Daily Mail days before the 1924 election and contributed to a Tory landslide.

More recently, Labour ran into trouble at the 1992 general election over what became known as the War of Jennifer’s Ear, with the party accused of presenting misleading details of a little girl with glue ear in an election broadcast about the NHS.

Under Tony Blair, a lack of transparency and honesty came under the umbrella of “spin” – the words themselves spun into something more palatable. Yet the difference today is that, helped by social media, voters are drowning in so much available information on politics and policy it is difficult to check what is accurate and what is fake, what is truth and what is spin.

Nobody held accountable

And even when a political lie is called out – the £350m bus during the EU referendum, for example – nobody is held accountable. Instead, its authors are rewarded with high office. Mr Johnson keeps repeating the £2,400 “cost of Corbyn” line even though the figure has been disputed; he keeps repeating the 40 new hospitals policy when it is objectively not true.

Pollster Matt Singh of Number Cruncher Analytics says it is hard to prove that political lying has become more widespread than in previous elections, but adds: “It does seem as though the political norm around lying has broken down, perhaps because everyone is (accused of) doing it.

“And if people are voting more on culture and identity than policy, it may be that they’re more prepared to tolerate it from politicians who share their values.”

If voters are electing their politicians on the basis of identity, of tribal loyalty, rather than whether they are telling the truth, then we are in a pretty grim place. And when politicians lie and get away with it, voters stop believing parties when they do tell the truth.

This happened on BBC1’s Question Time on Thursday evening, when an audience member told Labour’s Richard Burgon he was a “liar” for saying that anyone earning over £80,000 – targeted by Mr Corbyn’s plans for tax rises – was in the top 5 per cent of earners.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics prove the earnings threshold for the top 5 per cent of earners is in fact below that, at £75,300. On this, Labour is telling the truth. But the word “liar” has lost its currency. This is possibly the most dishonest election in modern times, and we are all the poorer for it.