The Welsh Government promised to introduce a law banning lying politicians before the next Senedd election after striking a last-minute deal to avert defeat.
Mick Antoniw, who is counsel general, the Welsh Government’s chief legal adviser, reached an agreement with Adam Price just before a key vote on creating an offence of deception.
Under the elections bill, Mr Price proposed a four-year disqualification for Senedd members, ministers or candidates found guilty of deliberate lying.
Mr Antoniw stopped short of supporting criminalisation as he invited the Senedd’s standards committee, which is holding an inquiry on accountability, to make proposals.
He said: “The Welsh Government will bring forward legislation before 2026 for the disqualification of members and candidates found guilty of deception through an independent judicial process.”
That’s nice, but not true.
When it comes to parliaments in the Nordics region, you’d bet your bippy that both formality and accountability is a part of procedure.
Lying knowingly and being caught for it is political suicide, between the representatives - because we have representative democracy, as most people do - though we do have national votes on occassion.
That means it’s largely their culture, the representatives that is, and that culture, when soured, can manipulate and destroy entire societies, very easily.
It can also be used to say persecute minorities. See Daughter of the Confederacy and the US judicial system put on camera since the 60s, all the way up to the “anti-woke movement”. The inflammatory messaging, the lying, the deceit, has caused uncountable damage to psyches, lives, families and communities.
This also applies to cases like Detroit. The former motor industry basically swindled the people of Detroit with the help of gullible and/or corrupt politicians. An industry that could no longer compete was fed money, which was pocketed, and people just walked away from destroying the economy of an entire city instead of dealing with it properly.
The idea that representatives get to say and accept whatever they want without consequence is akin to saying they get to do whatever they want without consequences. That breeds corruption, which breeds degradation and quite possibly collapse of a society.
Remember: history will always outclass idealism and philosophy.