Monkeygrinder's Organ
Dodgy geezer swilling vapid lager
Yeah, I think a good example is the famous Michael Howard/Jeremy Paxman interview. You can see Howard wriggling and avoiding the question but he's trying really, really hard to avoid directly lying isn't he. For whatever reason, whether he thinks of himself as a truthful person or if he thinks there'll be consequences if he's caught out, he obviously really doesn't want to tell the lie. Now that's thought of as a classic example of political dishonesty, with some reason, but it's very different in character from the Boris Johnson approach.
I think that whole 'all politicians are liars' thing (and a wider reflexive distrust of most sources) is a bit of a cop out tbh. It's obviously defensive and put out as a sort of 'I'm too clever and knowing, you can't mug me off' sort of thing but it's really not. It's just risk averse and avoiding putting in the effort, and I think it can help create the space where the Trumps and Johnsons and the conspiracy theorists can thrive.
