Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage are the three political figures who garner the most public recognition in Britain today. They share and promote Brexit’s underlying public

anxiety about immigrants. This is their primary engagement with voters. Showmanship and outrageous – thus newsworthy – behaviour keeps all of them in the public eye. Each, in his own way,

disports himself to great effect in the grubby, if crowded, grounds of Chateau Celebrity. Many people find these three men morally repugnant. But evidently many others do not, are not

deterred by their fellow citizens’ repugnance, and would like Trump/Johnson/Farage to wield political power. Fundamental to their political strategy is the blurring of the distinction

tactical rather than pathological in comparison. Stockbroker Nigel, man of the people with his Coutts bank account, proffers more piffle rather than outright lies in his interviews and

speeches. But he has some very sinister friends and acquaintances, and keeps the source of his funds for his political work suspiciously obscure. Public support for them all continues. Does

lying matter? The 13th Century Dominican thinker, St. Thomas Aquinas, said that lying was making a false statement “at variance with his mind”. I am not sure that all Trump’s 10,000

utterances and tweets were “at variance with his mind”. He believes the last thing he says. Then again our three celebrities may well imagine the public don’t believe a word they say and

don’t take them seriously, goes the argument. I doubt that. True, politics and entertainment blend into each other these days; politicians are duly entertaining us and many of the electorate

are enjoying the big game. But lying is a corrosive thing. The Catholic catechism – I confess not my bedside reading – says that lying “sows discord, destroys society, undermines trust and

tears apart social relationships”. Not a bad description of Britain in June 2019. We laugh at our peril. Most people would not go along with Aristotle and St. Augustine who took a very hard

line on lying: lying is always wrong, no exceptions.  A memorable Dominican priest, Father Finbar Synnott, who headed the South African Catholic Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the

early 1970s, faithfully followed Augustine. At the peak of apartheid repression in the early 1980s, I used to stay in the Dominican Priory in Mayfair, Johannesburg (a confusing name for the

British visitor as Mayfair was one of the poorest parts of town). The beat-up priory hid several young black activists on the run from the security police. When the phone rang everyone leapt

across the room to take the call. I asked why and was told that, if Finbar picked up, he would feel obliged to tell the truth about the priory’s temporary residents, whoever was asking. His

brother Dominicans were less Augustinian. You became accustomed to ‘white lies’ in apartheid South Africa. The police must have known everyone was lying as the priory was shot up one night;

and, rather unfairly in the morning, bullet holes were visible above Finbar’s bed. We concluded that sleeping soundly with a clear conscience had saved his life. The lies that corrode

British and US society are not ‘white lies’. They are profoundly injurious ones, a worrying aspect of our political culture’s decline. Trump, Johnson and Farage, deliberately or just

instinctively, create a world of fake news, and in consequence an entire political generation is mistrusted; people do not know who or what to believe, or having made up their minds are

unable to change them because contrary evidence is no longer evidence. An informed electorate, so important for democracy to work successfully becomes impossible. In other places and at

other times this state of affairs has led to authoritarianism and the assassination of journalists committed to the truth. I find myself hesitating to say we are a very long way from there

yet. Is not suggesting that our future Prime Minister might prorogue Parliament to thwart the will of Parliament a first move in the authoritarian playbook? We just cannot take the

continuation of a healthy democracy, the rule of law, and strong governing institutions for granted. We need to ask ourselves what it means about us and our societies that three men known

for their lack of moral values and personal virtues attract the spotlight of celebrity, become leaders, and are given power over us. And once we have asked ourselves, and not liked the

answer, we need to speak out and vote accordingly.