In a general sense, the way to be a successful liar is to accrue money, from which comes power – which in turn begets more power. In those three lifestages, one can, for example, buy access to media, buy legislatures, and then become the most powerful legislator by buying the voters with their own money. But along the way, certain tried and tested techniques can grease the wheels. In the context of media, banking and Contrick19, this can be quite informative.

How to be an engaging liar

Rule #1: You gotta practice
Jamie Dimon at the Senate Banking Committee hearing yesterday:
“I appreciate the invitation to appear before you to talk about JPMorgan Chase, the strength and resilience of the U.S. financial system, and the people, businesses and communities we serve.”
“Banks play an essential role in a community, with the potential of bringing people together, enabling companies and individuals to reach their dreams, and being a source of strength in difficult times”.
“We have unwavering principles that are not just about a fortress balance sheet, but also about risk management and culture”.
Dimon told all three lies in the first five minutes of his address.

Rule #2: Look profoundly hurt by the question
Jeremy Hunt to the Commons, 2014 on redacting 211 incriminating Newscorp emails:
“I have done nothing wrong”

Rule #3: If that doesn’t cut it, tell a gag
Boris Johnson, Tory Conference 2019:
“It was this Conservative government that tackled the debt and the deficit left by the last Labour government…..Remember it was only a few years ago when people were saying that solar power would never work in cloudy old Britain and that wind turbines couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding”

Rule #4: Sign up for MSM journalism.
Tom Harwood of GBNews yesterday:
“Anyone telling you the vaccines are experimental is a bare-faced liar”

Rule #5: Make the lie so big, it seems unpatriotic to question it
Matt Hancock, to the Commons, December 2020:
“Both these vaccines have received full MHRC approval, and are completely safe”

Josef Goebbels in a Sportpalast speech, 1935:
“All Jews are Communists”

Rule #6: Become French President, and play the Perfide Albion card
Emmanuel Macron, May 26th 2021:
“We are introducing compulsory isolation for all British visitors due to the acute danger from the Indian variant there”.

Rule #7: Trot out the family
David Mellor in 1992 following his affair with an actress:
“Our family is still strong, and now I just want to put this behind me and get on with my Cabinet job”.

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Now as it happens, Goebbels ( Left, who uttered the lie 85 years ago) was the only one made to pay for his calumny. However, it took ten years and 65 million lives….and he never faced justice: he poisoned himself – having dished out the same pills to his six children and long-suffering wife. As for the other featured dissemblers, they have not as yet wound up in Court or prison; on the whole in fact, they have flourished.

The more contemporary fibfest starts in 1992, and ends in 2021. Yesterday, during a Parliamentary hearing, Dominic Cummings accused Health Secretary Matt Hancock of serial lying, adding that he “should’ve been sacked”. Staying in character, Hancock hit back this morning…..with a lie:

“I’ve been straight with everyone from the start”

You may now vomit at “what must I do to protect life” (especially his). You are also allowed to blink at the idea of him being so unutterably dense, he thought it was a good idea to dump critical Covid patients among the most aged – and therefore vulnerable. It always smacked to me of borderline eugenics…in the same way that he appears to have let the Indian variant have a head start. But who knows? Perhaps I am being harsh….although when we get to the “perfectly safe and fully approved” vaccines gigafib (which resides in Hansard records and on BBCParliament video) let’s return to Planet Earth: he lied.

He is trying to revert to the old Nuremberg Trials excuse (I voss only obeyink orderss) as so many have: we followed the science, we followed clinical advice, we followed the data, we were mesmerised by unser geliebte Ubersturmbannfuhrer Whitty. Chris Whitty has the charisma of a two-dimensional amoeba, right? But Matt – bless – was taken in by his evil presence. Not even Joey Goebbels resorted to that one.

As the day proceeds, Hancock is adopting the ‘present a zig-zagging target’ tactic so beloved of the cunning. “I can’t dally here and listen to your unworthy accusations….I have my daily quota of lives to save”. He swiftly moved on to say it is “too early to say whether or not the country can fully reopen on June 21st, now that the Indian variant is the dominant strain in Britain”. The BBC gave him a helping hand by wheeling out Professor Neil Ferguson to say that “the Indian variant had gone from being a small minority a month ago to the majority variant now”. When are we going to have an Inquiry about why this Cadbury’s Flake of alarmism wasn’t deported to North Korea some time around 2005?

More lies to smother a Truth: the Indian variant is mild, and it’s only two days since PHE said that vaccines “are producing spectacular results against it”. But any excuse will do when it comes to these increasingly up, down, yes, no, good, bad soundbites.

The Covid saga – which you can read in full detail here – is suffused with arrant nonsense, swirling clouds of stinky yellow mystery, easily detected conflicts of interest and rewritten virology science. None of the questions our Nation needs answering were anywhere to be heard in the events of the last two days – most notably, why did Hancock ignore excellent management drugs (he still does) and how in God’s name did 40% of all Covid confirmed cases begin in NHS hospitals? Once again, the UK’s most sacred cow is going to get away with deadly failings.

“There will be a day of reckoning” tweeters continue to insist. But pretty much since the days of the appalling David Mellor, nobody in the grubby corridors of Whiteminster has been hauled before anything more mind-concentrating than Jacob Rees-Mogg licking the Brexit traitor Olly Robbins all over.

No policeman, judge, Opposition MP or media hack is going to further the cause of justice: their moguls will ensure that – as we’ve seen today – there is a surfeit of “he said, she said” – but not so much as a trickle of anyone asking impertinent questions about those who make the rules.

Boris Johnson, for example, has just accused Dominic Cummings of making claims that “do not bear any relation to reality” – a state which the Prime Minister only very rarely leaves himself…about Hackgate, Taxi emissions, Skripal drivel, and the book about Greek history he is, we’re told, writing.

I would imagine the malign forces of the Intelligence, Pharmaceutical and Banking communities are becoming increasingly anxious about BoJo’s obvious shortcomings. But they will only give us Hunt, Sunak, Raab or some cobbled together coalition.

Cleaning up this mess is down to us – in one form or another. Anyone for a Churchill?