David Cameron is reckless but Boris Johnson is a liar

I've never been one to call politicians liars. They dissemble and quote selectively, of course. But I tend to think that they mean what they promise, even if they turn out to be things that can't necessarily be achieved. And circumstances change. So yes, they fail to do what they have said they would, but I don't count that as lying. As an extreme example, David Cameron is in the uncomfortable position of having promised net migration would be in the "tens of thousands". I accept I may be being charitable in thinking this was not a lie but a reckless statement made when, at best, badly misinformed about what was going to be possible.

Worse than that, Cameron told the 2014 Tory conference "Numbers have increased faster than we in this country wanted, at a level that was too much for our communities, for our labour markets. All of this has to change - and it will be at the very heart of my renegotiation strategy for Europe. Britain, I know you want this sorted. So I will go to Brussels, I will not take no for an answer and, when it comes to freedom of movement, I will get what Britain needs". Wow. What a broken promise. He didn't even ask for what he said he would! As soon as Merkel reminded him what John Major signed up to at Maastricht, he forgot what he came for (watch out for another post on just that).

I don't count even that degree of reckless promise followed by spineless collapse as a lie, unless it can be shown Cameron knew his promise was going to prove to be 100% impossible.

But Boris Johnson does lie, in the sense of deliberately saying things he knows cannot happen. Unless he's Alice in Wonderland and can believe six impossible things before breakfast.

Under pressure, Boris stuck to the figure of £350M a week for the cost to us of EU membership in last week's ITV debate. This number has been thoroughly discredited weeks ago as it excludes our rebate (see 2 June post). It was a rare moment for me to be in agreement with Nicola Sturgeon as she called Boris's statement a "whopper", although watching her and Amber Rudd gang up on Johnson was not particularly edifying. Even Nigel Farage thought better of defending the number on TV and settled for suggesting we talk about the net figure, which is significantly lower.

That's bad enough, but when Boris was subsequently pressed on Welsh TV about the monies Wales gets from EU sources, he said that there was no reason the UK government would not continue with this funding. This is a reasonable position to take, but not when you have said that "up to" £350M a week would be freed up for the NHS.

The Leave campaign has said that the money would be spent much more "effectively" and so there would be "more than enough money" to make this promise to Wales. I find that deeply unconvincing. This is a story we've heard many times before. While I expect that large efficiencies could be made in almost every area of public spending, the savings achieved rarely reach the levels claimed in advance.

Boris isn't stupid. I suspect he would be in the upper echelons of MPs ranked by intelligence. Indeed, by saying "up to" he has tried to dissemble and blur the fact that these positions are wholly incompatible.

I realise he was reflecting the official position of the Vote Leave campaign, which has understandably been branded as "snake oil" over this kind of thing. But Boris is the man who stood there and said it.

I was a reluctant admirer of Boris Johnson. Reluctant only because I wondered whether the substance matched the charisma. No longer. There are plenty of politicians who I have felt were well intentioned but totally and absolutely wrong in almost everything they said, as their solutions would not produce the outcomes they were wanting. But Boris Johnson is perhaps the first British politician who I have ever felt is a deliberate, bare faced, liar in the sense of holding to a position which he knows has been conclusively shown to be false.