As Peter Oborne will remember, because we’ve both been journalists for a long time, a couple of glorious front pages appeared in The Guardian last century. The paper’s splash headline in 1996 about litigious government minister Neil Hamilton contained only five words: “A liar and a cheat”. This was overtopped the following year with a six-word splash on Jonathan Aitken, another dishonest minister who had sued the papers for libel in that sleazy government: “He lied and lied and lied”.
In those days, ministers who were found out lying to Parliament were doomed. The 1963 political fate of John Profumo, the war minister who unwisely denied having sex with Christine Keeler, was always reverentially quoted, and Erskine May, Parliament’s official bible, as Oborne records, spelled out the rule:
It is of paramount importance that ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity. Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation.
