Whether you call it magical thinking or cakeism, the prime minister’s defining trait has absorbed the Conservative party
The personal dishonesty of the prime minister is serial and well documented. It’s the thread that has run through his career. It saw him fired from his first job, at the Times, for making up quotes, then saw him fired from the Tory frontbench for lying to his party leader – to say nothing of the anti-EU fabrications that made Boris Johnson’s name as Brussels correspondent of the Daily Telegraph.
But dishonesty is no longer merely the character flaw of one man. It has become the imprint of his party and this government.
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
