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United Kingdom: Boris Johnson and the Post-Truth

Boris Johnson has just obtained a solid majority in the House of Commons and which maintains close relations with the media, in particular the press.

The images went around all the screens: Boris Johnson at the controls of a bulldozer spraying a wall of anti-Brexit bricks of polystyrene. Ridiculous, grotesque? This is a question that does not reach Boris Jonhson. The important thing is that it makes an impression, whether it is effective, and whether it is true or not. The Guardian recently reported that it claimed, in a speech broadcast on Sky News, to build 40 hospitals and hire 20,000 more police, which is completely untrue. Or that his Labor opponent Jeremy Corbyn's plan was to spend £ 1.2 trillion and oppose private property. " Never in three decades have I seen so many lies from a high-level politician ," Guardian reporter Peter Oborne wrote in November, regretting that the Sky News host did not even try to contradict him. Including when he accuses Corbyn of being on the side of Russia even when his government refuses to publish a report on the donations of Russian businessmen to the conservative party.

Lying is more than second nature to Boris Johnson. It is in a way the engine of its ascent. Between 89 and 94, correspondent in Brussels of the Daily Telegraph , he invented directives on the regulatory size of condoms or coffins, on the curvature of bananas, on the prohibition of cocktail shrimp ... Very quickly appointed assistant editor , he gave the conservative British press, and in particular the Times under the influence of Rupert Murdoch, an increasingly anti-European tone which prepared the Brexit. In short, the " buffoon Boris ", as it was called then, said what a large part of public opinion wanted to understand, the tabloids therefore followed him on what were called euro-myths. And that made him famous.

Today, Boris Johnson finds himself totally in the concept of post-truth dear to Donald Trump. Everything is good, from fake websites attributed to Labor to the most twisted tricks like a Tories Twitter account transformed into a fact-checking site or Facebook ads - 90% false according to First Draft. The media have once again been the sounding board of a rude orchestration and social networks have been effective relays. The question now is whether public channels like Channel 4, which had replaced it with a block of melting ice, to denounce his absence from a climate debate, are not going to pay for their impertinence. The channel’s license expires in 2024.