Our politicians should stop paltering

Too often they ply us with narrow truths that mask their greater lies

Credit where it’s due. A few years ago a group of American academics rescued a 500 year-old word from obscurity. We need it today more than ever. To show what it means, here are some examples of paltering.

“That doesn’t mean, of course, that the pound here in Britain, in your pocket or purse or in your bank, has been devalued” (Harold Wilson, 1967)

“Today a Conservative government brings down taxes” (Jeremy Hunt, 2024)

“As the economy improves, we want to ensure that more pensioners are eligible for winter fuel payments” (Keir Starmer, 2025)

“This Labour government is making record cash investment in our national health service, increasing real-terms, day-to-day spending by 3% per year for every single year of this spending review“ (Rachel Reeves, 2025)

Paltering lives in the space between candour and deceit. It is one of the great enemies of honest politics. It happens when people say things that they insist are true but which mislead their audience.

Thus Wilson did say that some prices would go up, but that was not the message viewers took from his broadcast following devaluation in 1967…

Hunt did reduce national insurance just before last year’s election, but failed to admit that his policies would raise the overall tax burden…

Starmer implied that the U-turn on winter fuel allowance was not a U-turn at all…

And Reeves failed to say that 3% is well below the historic average for increases in NHS funding – and that her claim of a “cash" record, while technically true, collapses as soon as past figures for NHS funding are adjusted for inflation.

Why do politicians keep paltering? What leads them to search out the narrow truth that masks the greater lie? The obvious answer is that they think they can get away with it. If so, they are wrong. Voters didn’t believe Wilson or Hunt. Recently, members of one focus group laughed when told that Starmer’s reason for raising the threshold for the winter fuel allowance was that the economy was growing. As for Reeves, a YouGov poll, conducted after last week’s spending review, found that her plans had little credibility with voters.

Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Francesca Gino, a co-author of the study cited above, has a different explanation for the paltering habit:

“People seem to be using this strategy because in their minds, they’re telling the truth, so they think they’re being honest. But the people being deceived think they’re being just as dishonest as if they lie outright to their faces.”

This makes sense. Having followed British politics for more than half a century, I can think of few occasions when a senior politician has knowingly told an outright lie. The House of Commons Privileges Committee did something quite exceptional three years ago when it found that Boris Johnson had deliberately misled MPs on five occasions. Yet polls tell us time and again that most voters think deception is routine. The paltering habit helps to explain both this perception and the fact that politicians often feel they are misunderstood. They genuinely feel they are honest custodians of the public realm. They savour their truth while voters deplore the lie.

So what should politicians do? The following proposal is made in the confident expectation that it will be dismissed as the blathering of a carefree observer who has never felt the heat of life inside the political kitchen. Guilty as charged. Nevertheless, here goes. An end to paltering would be good not just for the quality of political debate but the reputation of politicians themselves.

Here are two examples of prime ministers getting it right – one 85 years ago when Britain faced the threat of invasion, the other more recently, when the last Labour government upset pensioners.

On May 13, 1940, in his first speech to the House of Commons as prime minister, Winston Churchill said: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering.” Three weeks later, following the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk, Churchill stressed the setback more than the achievement: “We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations, but there was a victory inside this deliverance which must be noted.”

Voters respected Churchill’s brutal honesty. In July 1940, Gallup found that 88 per cent approved of him as prime minister; just seven per cent disapproved.

Now to the more recent example of a prime minister resisting the opportunity to go paltering, In 1999, two years into Tony Blair’s premiership, the state pension was raised by 75p a week. This followed the rule that pensions should keep pace with inflation. The uplift was low because inflation was down. Yet the wages of most workers were rising faster than that. Pensioners complained of being left behind. The following year, without admitting that the 75p uplift was too low, Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer threw new money at the problem – increasing the winter fuel allowance by £50, free television licences for people over 75, and so on.

In his memoirs, Blair wrote that he believed the government still had a problem.

“Damage was done. I decided at the 2000 party conference to apologise and eat a portion of humble pie. We had some blowback from Gordon and Alistair Darling [Chief Secretary to the Treasury] who felt it dangerous to admit we were wrong; but I felt it was worth it. Anyway, we were wrong!”

The following year, Labour was re-elected with almost as big a landslide as in 1997. Maybe his candour made no difference, but it did no harm.

Paltering, on the other hand, does do harm - not least to the standing of its practitioners. Reeves is almost certain to announce tax increases in the next few months. She will say that events outside her control – Trump’s tariffs, global risks, turbulent markets and so on – have forced her hand. She will be right. But to win the argument she needs to have established a reputation for coming clean with MPs and the wider public. Without it she risks being battered by accusations of incompetence and dishonesty which, however unfair on this occasion, are likely to stick. Labour’s hopes of reviving support would be knocked back once again.

That is bad, but not the worst of it. Since the dawn of democracy, the first objective of populists has been to destroy the credibility of traditional parties. That task is much easier when established politicians already play fast and loose with the truth. Today, Reform claims to offers a clean break with the dodgy ways of the past. If Nigel Farage becomes prime minister he may well behave as badly as those he mocks today. By then it will be too late.

For now, and however hot the political kitchen, a useful way to start fighting back would be to put an end to paltering. Go on Keir, go on Rachel; for that matter, go on Kemi: give it a try.