Bill Carmichael: The lies that harm Hillary Clinton's fitness to lead '“ and trust in politics

Politicians seem to find it hard to understand the meaning of this adage – that if they are caught out telling us lies we are far less likely to believe them the second time around.

And the public have been told so many barefaced fibs that it’s increasingly difficult to believe anything anymore.

That, and the loss of faith in so-called experts (who seem to have pretty much got everything 100 per cent wrong over Brexit), has led to a collapse in confidence in the political establishment, not only in the UK but around the western world.

Take for example in the US, where the political elite – and the court eunuchs in what passes for an independent press in the US – have been zealously watching the back of their preferred candidate for president, Hillary Clinton.

In recent months Clinton has sometimes been unsteady on her feet and has suffered several prolonged coughing fits on the stump. But anyone who questioned the Democratic candidate’s state of health was dismissed as a wild conspiracy theorist.

Not any more. The party line just about held until last Sunday, when Clinton suffered a dramatic collapse at the memorial service for the victims of the 9/11 Islamist atrocities.

Video footage shows Clinton’s head bobbing uncontrollably and her knees buckling before she keels over completely and is thrown into the back of a van “like a side of beef” by her security detail.

Something was seriously wrong, but the Clinton lie machine clicked into gear as it has done so frequently over many years. Her campaign team insisted she was perfectly healthy and had just suffered a minor “overheating” problem during the ceremony. She was fine, absolutely no problem at all.

Three hours later the story changed – it was admitted that she was suffering from bacterial pneumonia which had been diagnosed the previous Friday. In other words when her campaign was insisting she had no health problems they knew she was suffering from pneumonia. In other words it was a big, fat lie.

In an update later this week her campaign insisted she was recovering from her illness and was “healthy and fit”.

Erm… Okay, but considering you blatantly lied to us on Sunday, why should we believe you are telling the truth on Wednesday?

That’s a question many Americans are asking, but for the moment Clinton remains favourite to win November’s election against the Republican challenger Donald Trump.

It may be true that her health problems are minor and she is fit to lead the free world, but a question mark will remain over Clinton’s truthfulness.

At least now her health should come under proper scrutiny and it may have an impact on voters. It is going to be an interesting autumn for followers of US politics.

Political pruning

PLANS to redraw the UK’s parliamentary constituency boundaries and reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 have produced predictable howls of outrage.

Labour described the plan as “Tory gerrymandering”, even though the proposals have been drawn up by the impeccably impartial and independent Boundary Commission.

Labour MP Chris Bryant complained that reducing the size of the House of Commons was “daft” when the population was rising.

What utter nonsense. We have more lawmakers than almost every other country in the world.

For example, the United States has 435 members of the House of Representatives plus 100 members of the senate – a total of 535 lawmakers for a population of 320 million.

In contrast, the UK has 650 MPs plus around 826 members of the unelected House of Lords – a total of 1,476 lawmakers for a population of 64 million.

In other words we have almost three times the number of lawmakers than the US for a population that is a fifth of the size.

Much more radical pruning is required to cut this bloated and vastly expensive system down to size.

I suggest no more than 400 MPs, plus 100 elected members of a reformed second chamber.

This would not only be more democratic, but vastly cheaper.