Suella’s only mistake was being caught

RISHI Sunak and other senior Conservatives have told us that when Suella Braverman broke the ministerial code she had been making a ‘mistake’, thus justifying her return as Home Secretary. After all, we all make mistakes, don’t we?

‘Mistake’ is a slippery kind of word, implying a level of innocence, although one definition is an error of judgement. Ms Braverman’s only mistake was being caught out. She knew exactly what she was doing when she sent confidential documents to someone not entitled to see them, using her private email rather than her official one – presumably in the hope of not being found out. Her error of judgement was her belief that she would get away with it.

It is a sad fact that we have all become used to lying and dishonesty in politics in recent years. Boris Johnson was well known as a serial liar, but this didn’t stop him from becoming Prime Minister.

Penny Mordaunt achieved notoriety for her two lies in one sentence during the Brexit campaign – that Turkey was about to join the

EU and there was nothing we could do to prevent it – but this didn’t disqualify her as a contender for the top job.

A recent short biopic video of Jacob Rees-Mogg, compiled by the group Led by Donkeys, showed him telling several porkies, including a grossly misleading and inaccurate representation of material from an International Panel on Climate Change report. This supposedly supported his view that we shouldn’t be trying to prevent climate change but learning to live with it, although the actual report showed exactly the opposite.

It seems that achieving the aims of a particular political ideology, by hook or by crook, has now become more important to many politicians than maintaining honesty and discretion. I find this utterly depressing. Given the record of dishonesty among so many of the current crop of ministers and MPs, there seems to be no real prospect of improvement, despite Rishi Sunak’s declared good intentions. And sadly, it does seem that there are too many journalists and media editors who need reminding that it is their job to expose dishonesty and deception in politics, not to perpetuate it.

Francis Kirkham Crediton, Mid Devon