OPINION; Lies, damned lies and the leaders we deserve

For this first column of 2023, I want to take a look at lies in the public sphere — specifically lies from politicians.

Once upon a time, it was a given that a person who put him or herself out there for public office would tell the truth about his or her background. And that those who were found to have lied about aspects of their personal biography would be rejected by the public.

For some people, of course, lying comes as naturally as breathing, refusing to accept responsibility for whoppers until the truth is forced out of their tightly-clenched teeth. I’m sure most readers will have no difficulty in summoning up British practitioners of the Great Lie.

But there are different sorts of lies stalking the world now: out-and-out inventions, and then lies which are not so much denials of previous behaviour as a sublime indifference, a refusal to acknowledge historic wrongdoing.

The lies uttered by American Congressman-elect George Santos fall primarily into the first category, though with a good sprinkling into the sublime indifference area.

Santos — whose very name can worryingly be misread for Soros, with all the misunderstanding that entails — is, for those who have unaccountably missed his story, a 34-year-old would-be politician, who, in November, stood for office and won in New York’s Third Congressional District, parts of whose electorate are heavily Jewish.

Six weeks after his election, questions began to circulate about Santos. It turns out that he had lied, consistently and infuriatingly, about his employment, education, charity work, property ownership — and, most frighteningly for his electorate, about being Jewish. Santos repeatedly described himself during his campaign as an American Jew. For the avoidance of doubt, he was brought up Catholic, born to parents who left Brazil for New York in search of economic improvement, Now he says he had merely “embellished” his CV, and in a truly disturbing TV interview he gave last week, appears to think that his lies can be brushed aside and that he can continue to sit in Congress as an upright and honourable representative of New Yorkers.

I have no problem with politicians who seek to curry favour with sections of the populace to which they don’t belong. Everybody does it, not least in Britain, as we saw over Chanukah when politicians of every stripe (including some we’d rather not have heard from) wished the Jewish community an enjoyable festival. But none of them — not even the slimiest — sought to pretend that they were part of our community like Santos did. The Republican Party should chuck him out and face a proper, clean re-election to replace him.

And talking of slime draws me (sigh) inexorably to Israel, whose latest group of shanda-ites has now become the 37th government in the 25th Knesset. Here we are well and truly in the second category of chutzpah, the politicians whose murky past seems to have precisely no effect on their ability to rule over Israeli citizens in the present.

I’m not even talking about the all too well-worn disreputable biographies of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, respectively (though not respectfully) minister of national security and minister of finance.

I’m talking about people like Arye Deri, whose quiverful of titles now include vice prime minister, minister of health and minister of the Interior and periphery. Deri, who served a prison term two decades ago for taking bribes, and who resigned from the Knesset just a year ago facing allegations of “moral turpitude” and tax offences.

And that’s without touching on the dubious personal record of the ‘Comeback Kid’ himself, Benjamin Netanyahu, currently, and astonishingly, still on trial for alleged corruption.

Never was it more true that lying is now apparently no bar to taking a role in public life. Genuinely, we get the leaders we deserve.