Boris Johnson is a pathological liar. This has been known for decades. He was elected Conservative Party leader and appointed prime minister in spite of this fact. He has been sacked numerous times for lying: by the Conservative Party for lying about an adulterous affair to then–party leader Michael Howard, and by the Times for making up a quote in a front-page story. He has been in court for lying to his wife about an adulterous affair that resulted in a secret child and for deceiving the mother’s partner. His litany of untruths is such as to make it clear that this is not a man merely willing to tell a fib to get out of a tight spot, or to embellish a story to impress the right people. Rather, his behavior reveals a very specific psychology: a man who believes the rules of ordinary life and society do not apply to him, because he is an extraordinary person.

Such behavior should be ruinous for any person’s career regardless of their social class, wealth, or the interests propping them up: it certainly should preclude one from high office, let alone the most powerful position in the country. But Johnson’s penchant for deceit has instead become the central plank of the Conservative electoral strategy. Ordinarily, political strategists might work on “spin”: how best to frame figures and news stories to fit a particular narrative. In the 2019 election, that approach has gone out the window. Instead, the Conservatives just lie. Ministers on TV will flatly deny the accepted understanding of how numbers work, bombard journalists with bald falsehoods, and repeat verbatim smears about the Labour leadership.

During a party-leaders debate, the Conservative press office Twitter account rebranded itself as “FactCheck UK,” a fake, “impartial” fact-checking organization that actually spewed Tory spin and attacked Labour. Various Conservative social media accounts mendaciously edited footage of various Labour MPs to create the appearance of opposition politicians stumped by questions or rubbishing the manifesto of their own party, sometimes using fake date stamps and TV chyrons. Johnson repeatedly lied that there would be no checks on goods passing between Britain and Northern Ireland. When Labour launched their manifesto, the Conservatives bought up multiple ads for fake websites claiming to host the Labour Party manifesto. These were banned by Google after complaints.