The general election campaign is entering its final stages. On Friday, the two main party leaders, Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, will for the second time this week go head-to-head in a televised stand-off. People will write angry things on the internet. Mrs May will say “strong and stable”. The nation will engage soberly with serious matters of policy.
In the last fortnight, two very different party conferences have occurred; Labour’s in Liverpool and the Conservative’s in Birmingham. For the most part, Conservative attendees – finding themselves in a majority government, with an exit from the EU in the offing and a Prime Minister channelling a bit of their heroine, Mrs Thatcher – were by far the happier.
George Orwell famously wrote that in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. Except, of course, he never wrote anything of the sort.
The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. In a court of law perhaps, but “truth” is often not so black and white in the public utterances of leaders.
At the beginning of 2015 who would have guessed that the Conservatives would secure a general election victory, the obscure backbencher Jeremy Corbyn would win the Labour leadership contest…