Post-truth, fake news - when did it all really start? Being 'economical with the truth' has become almost a jokey euphemism for the political lie - a cosy insider's phrase for the disingenuousness that is now accepted as part and parcel of political life. But as we face the third term of a government that has elevated this kind of economics almost to an art form, is it now time to question the creeping invasion of falsehood? What does the rise of the political lie say about our society? At what point, if we have not reached it already, will we cease to believe a word politicians say? Tracing the history of political falsehood back to its earliest days, but focusing specifically on the exponential rise of the phenomenon during the Major and Blair governments, Peter Oborne demonstrates that the truth has become an increasingly slippery concept in recent years. From woolly pronouncements that are designed merely to obfuscate to outright and blatant lies whose intention is to deceive, the political lie is never far from the surface. And its prevalence has led to a catastrophic decline in trust, at a time when people are more politicised than ever. Rigorous, riveting and profoundly shocking, this is a devastating book about one of the single biggest issues facing us today.

Tracing the history of political falsehood back to its earliest days but focusing specifically on the exponential rise of the phenomenon during the Major and Blair governments, the author demonstrates that the truth has become an increasingly slippery concept in recent years.

Over the past decade, American outlets such as PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, and the Washington Post's Fact Checker have shaken up the political world by holding public figures accountable for what they say. Cited across social and national news media, these verdicts can rattle a political campaign and send the White House press corps scrambling. Yet fact-checking is a fraught kind of journalism, one that challenges reporters' traditional roles as objective observers and places them at the center of white-hot, real-time debates. As these journalists are the first to admit, in a hyperpartisan world, facts can easily slip into fiction, and decisions about which claims to investigate and how to judge them are frequently denounced as unfair play. Deciding What's True draws on Lucas Graves's unique access to the members of the newsrooms leading this movement. Graves vividly recounts the routines of journalists at three of these hyperconnected, technologically innovative organizations and what informs their approach to a story. Graves also plots a compelling, personality-driven history of the fact-checking movement and its recent evolution from the blogosphere, reflecting on its revolutionary remaking of journalistic ethics and practice. His book demonstrates the ways these rising organizations depend on professional networks and media partnerships yet have also made inroads with the academic and philanthropic worlds. These networks have become a vital source of influence as fact-checking spreads around the world.

Both an extension of and a companion to his acclaimed exposé of political mendacity, THE RISE OF POLITICAL LYING, Peter Oborne's new book reveals in devastating fashion just how far we have left behind us the idea of people going into politics for that quaint reason, to serve the public. Notions of the greater good and "putting something back" now seem absurdly idealistic, such is the pervasiveness of cynicism in our politics and politicians. Of course, self-interest has always played a part, and Oborne will show how our current climate owes much to the venality of the eighteenth century. But in these allegedly enlightened times should we not know better? Do we not deserve better from those who seek our electoral approval? Full of revealing and insightful stories and anecdotes to support his case, and with a passionate call for reform, THE TRIUMPH OF THE POLITICAL CLASS is destined to be one of thedefining political books of recent years.

Trust in our politicians is at an all-time low. We're in a "post-truth" era, where feelings trump facts, and where brazen rhetoric beats honesty. But do politicians lie more than they used to? And do we even want them to tell the truth? In a history full of wit and political acumen, Private Eye journalist Adam Macqueen dissects the gripping stories of the biggest political lies of the last half century, from the Profumo affair to Blair's WMDs to Boris Johnson's £350 million for the NHS. Covering lesser known whoppers, infamous lies from foreign shores ("I did not have sexual relations with that woman"), and some of the resolute untruths from Donald Trump's explosive presidential campaign, this is the quintessential guide to dishonesty from our leaders - and the often pernicious relationship between parliament and the media. But this book is also so much more. It explains how in the space of a lifetime we have gone from the implicit assumption that our rulers have our best interests at heart, to assuming the worst even when - in the majority of cases - politicians are actually doing their best.

* THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER * 'A clinical and merciless account of Johnson's mendacity... gripping' Guardian When Peter Oborne wrote The Rise of Political Lying, looking at the growth of political falsehood under John Major and Tony Blair, he believed things had got as bad as they could be. With the arrival of Boris Johnson at No 10 in 2019 began a new and unprecedented epidemic of deceit. In The Assault on Truth, a short and powerful new polemic, Oborne shows how Boris Johnson lied again and again in order to secure victory so he could force through Brexit in the face of parliamentary opposition. Johnson and his ministers then lied repeatedly to win the general election in December 2019. The government’s woeful response to the coronavirus pandemic has generated another wave of falsehoods, misrepresentations and fabrications. The scale and shamelessness of the lying of the Johnson administration far exceeds the lying about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and other issues under Tony Blair. This book argues that the ruthless use of political deceit under the Johnson government is part of a wider attack on civilised values and traditional institutions across the Western world, especially by Donald Trump in the USA. The Johnson and Trump methodology of deceit is about securing power for its own ends - even when they get exposed for lying, they shrug it off as a matter of no consequence. It matters because all Western institutions are built around the idea of integrity and accountability. This means that an assault on truth is an assault on the rule of law, state institutions and the fundamental idea of fairness, and even democracy itself.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the most successful Republican political operative of his generation, a searing, unflinching, and deeply personal exposé of how his party became what it is today “A blistering tell-all history. In his bare-knuckles account, Stevens confesses [that] the entire apparatus of his Republican Party is built on a pack of lies." —The New York Times Stuart Stevens spent decades electing Republicans at every level, from presidents to senators to local officials. He knows the GOP as intimately as anyone in America, and in this new book he offers a devastating portrait of a party that has lost its moral and political compass. This is not a book about how Donald J. Trump hijacked the Republican Party and changed it into something else. Stevens shows how Trump is in fact the natural outcome of five decades of hypocrisy and self-delusion, dating all the way back to the civil rights legislation of the early 1960s. Stevens shows how racism has always lurked in the modern GOP's DNA, from Goldwater's opposition to desegregation to Ronald Reagan's welfare queens and states' rights rhetoric. He gives an insider's account of the rank hypocrisy of the party's claims to embody "family values," and shows how the party's vaunted commitment to fiscal responsibility has been a charade since the 1980s. When a party stands for nothing, he argues, it is only natural that it will be taken over by the loudest and angriest voices in the room.

A fascinating exposé of office culture, in the style of the bestselling Affluenza, from popular psychologist Oliver James The modern working world is a dangerous place, where game-playing, duplicity and sheer malevolence are rife. Do talent and hard work count for nothing? Is politics everything? In this fascinating exposé, Oliver James reveals the murky underside of modern office life. With cutting-edge research and eye-opening interviews, he highlights the nasty practices that propel people to the top and shows how industries and cultures are fostering this behaviour. He then divulges strategies and techniques for not only surviving but thriving in these difficult environments. With the right mindset, you can distinguish and deal with toxic and overpromoted colleagues, charm your way through interviews and use office politics to your advantage. Office Politics will overthrow your perceptions of office life and set you on a new path to success. Oliver James trained and practised as a child clinical psychologist and, since 1988, has worked as a writer, journalist and television documentary producer and presenter. His books include Juvenile Violence in a Winner-Loser Culture, the bestselling They F*** You Up, Affluenza and Contented Dementia. He is a trustee of two children's charities: the National Family and Parenting Institute and Homestart.

#1 New York Times bestseller Featured on The Daily Show and 60 Minutes The acclaimed book that illuminates our world and its politics by revealing why bullshit is more dangerous than lying One of the most prominent features of our world is that there is so much bullshit. Yet we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, how it’s distinct from lying, what functions it serves, and what it means. In his acclaimed bestseller On Bullshit, Harry Frankfurt, who was one of the world’s most influential moral philosophers, explores this important subject, which has become a central problem of politics and our world. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, Frankfurt argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the bullshitter’s capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that the truth matters. Because of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are. Remarkably prescient and insightful, On Bullshit is a small book that explains a great deal about our time.

"There is no better book on fascism's complex and vexed relationship with truth."—Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them In this short companion to his book From Fascism to Populism in History, world-renowned historian Federico Finchelstein explains why fascists regarded simple and often hateful lies as truth, and why so many of their followers believed the falsehoods. Throughout the history of the twentieth century, many supporters of fascist ideologies regarded political lies as truth incarnated in their leader. From Hitler to Mussolini, fascist leaders capitalized on lies as the base of their power and popular sovereignty. This history continues in the present, when lies again seem to increasingly replace empirical truth. Now that actual news is presented as “fake news” and false news becomes government policy, A Brief History of Fascist Lies urges us to remember that the current talk of “post-truth” has a long political and intellectual lineage that we cannot ignore.