IN a pre-devolution academic paper published some 25 years ago and intriguingly entitled “A right to mislead Parliament?” the young(er) Adam Tomkins argued that without an absolute duty on ministers in any parliament not to lie it would be impossible for elected representatives to scrutinise decisions and effectively hold government to account.

He stressed how seriously the issue of honesty has always been taken in the UK Parliament (as it subsequently has been in the Scottish Parliament), a fact that can be clearly seen when considering the 1963 Profumo affair as well as the 1985 Westland crisis.

The academic and former Tory MSP’s contention, with which I completely concur, is that if Government ministers lie and get away with those lies, then our system of democracy cannot function. That fact should be of vital importance to us all because ensuring our democracy is well maintained is essential for the preservation of our basic freedoms, no matter your politics or your constitutional preference.

The Committee on Standards in Public Life – a standing advisory body established by John Major in 1995 – agrees. From its outset it has included truthfulness as one of the seven key “Nolan” principles which must guide all those in elected or appointed office.

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Voters appear to have a similar, but simpler, view. While many are cynical about their representatives there is an expectation that they should be committed to telling the truth and that there should be consequences if they are caught failing to do so. But now, although there is no doubt that the UK has a prime minister who is a proven serial liar, there appear to be few if any sanctions when those lies are laid bare.

There can be no dispute that there were parties held in 10 Downing Street last Christmas at a time when the rest of the country was forbidden even to visit dying relatives in hospital. Those parties were not organised by the Prime Minister’s press spokesperson nor do we know if she attended. Nonetheless, as I write this she is, so far, the only person to have been held accountable.

It is utterly inconceivable that the Prime Minister did not know this was happening. Even accepting that 10 Downing Street is more an office complex than a home, the people attending were those who worked with Boris Johnson and around him all day. We now know that at least one of them was among his most senior and trusted aides. Surely he, or someone else, must have mentioned, either before in anticipation or afterwards with a hangover, what had transpired? That is what happens in workplaces.

Consequently, notwithstanding Johnson’s arrogant, entitled self-absorption, it defies any rational or reasonable belief that he only discovered that those he sees every day had held such a party a year after it happened, though that is what he has maintained and continues to maintain.

He has done so brazenly and on the record in the House of Commons and, to add injury to insult, he has also threatened action against those who attended, seeking to divert attention away from himself.

That is the behaviour not just of a liar but of a creep as well.

Yet that is not the full extent of his lies by any means. He has lied – inside and outside the House of Commons – about vaccination and testing, about the environment and the economy, about poverty and child care and, endlessly, about Brexit.

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The last mentioned, of course, has particularly grave consequences for Northern Ireland, where his lies about there having to be no paperwork for goods moving into the province, were caught on video in November 2019, as he assured a business gathering: “There will be no forms, no checks, no barriers of any kind. You will have unfettered access.”

Being the ever-gallus Johnson, he went further, insisting that if any such forms were presented to companies they were to “ring up the Prime Minister and I will direct them to throw that form in the bin”.

He knew that couldn’t be, and wouldn’t be, the case. He had acquiesced to a deal which was bound to require at least some new checks. Yet he lied about them all the same despite the damage such lies were bound to cause given Northern Ireland’s troubled history and volatile politics.

Of course, he makes a particular speciality of lying about Scotland. Just a couple of weeks ago he claimed the SNP were down in the polls, though in fact the party’s ratings had risen and it was 30 points ahead of the Tories. He lies about his deliberate undermining of devolution, about his funding of the devolved governments and about their record, which is significantly better than his.

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These lies are not harmless banter, “just him” as some sycophants laughingly claim. They are emulated by many of his ministers, perhaps realising that if he can get away with it, so can they (the Secretary of State against Scotland has a particular penchant for asserting things about the state of relations between the two governments which bear no relation to reality) and most importantly of all, as Tomkins correctly outlines in his paper, they poison the very roots of democracy.

A Prime Minister who openly defies the Nolan Principles and who regards being held to account in the parliamentary chamber as a matter of so little import that he can blatantly lie, even there, on any and every subject is not fit to hold any office at all.

Moreover, our closest neighbour is – because of his actions in office – in danger of becoming a corrupted and decayed state which is not in the interests of either a devolved, or an independent, Scotland.

So that is why Ian Blackford was absolutely right to press not for a worthless apology, but for Johnson’s removal as quickly as possible.

And it is why he must go on doing so until that happy moment arrives.