Time to take the adjective away?

Peter Oborne, in the Daily Mail today, repeats his thesis about the lying political class. Blair is castigated, and Keith Vaz is added to the list of offenders, for continuing in parliament even when documentary evidence revealed that he was lying.

Surprisingly, Oborne confesses that when G. Brown became prime minister Oborne actually expected him to be more truthful. Those of us who were used to his "brownies" since 1997 were less sure. So often he came up with pronouncements which depended on carefully constructed bases, which were never admitted or acknowledged, or special definitions or using different measures of inflation in a single comparison. He has virtually ruled out the difference between investment, which sounds virtuous, and expenditure, which is unpopular. He arbitrarily left indebtedness off the balance sheet and cheerfully ignored anything which did not suit his case.

Recently in PMQ, of course, he has lost face. His attempted deceits have been rumbled very quickly, by the IFS and by people like Faser Nelson.

He told Blair that there was nothing the latter could say that Brown would ever believe, and many of us now say the same about Brown. He is just not able to speak the truth in a straight forward way. The inability has spread to some of his acolytes, especially Balls and Knight.

Some of the lying or deception is trivial, - Blair could not have seen Milburn play for the Toon, but some is very serious and it happens often enough to suggest that the long held convention that members are honourable and do not lie has now been abrogated.

Being caught out in a lie is no longer a reason to be suspended or sacked, or Vaz would have gone long ago.

Given that the many expenses fiddles involved behaviour according to the (lax) rules set, some rather dishonourable people will continue, at least to the next election. The relative few who were guilty of fraud have gone or will go, and ought to be prosecuted.

Now we know that lying regularly occurs, perhaps we should petition parliament to drop the title honourable or right honourable until they demonstrate that they are just that.

I am not optimistic. The recently introduced Parliamentary Standards Bill has a clause which offers prosecution and even jail for any member caught lying, but Jack Straw and others are already rowing back on this!

We have a bunch of elected representatives whose behaviour and morality would not be tolerated on the Stock Exchange or in the board rooms of banks and large businesses. It is about time that they earned the adjective "honourable".