The Tories’ promise of thousands more nurses isn’t just a lie – it’s proof they’re unfit to run the NHS

Peter Oborne, the former chief political commentator of the Daily Telegraph, who has spent a professional lifetime watching politicians, was moved to write recently

“I have been a political reporter for almost three decades and have never encountered a senior British politician who lies and fabricates so regularly, so shamelessly and so systematically as Boris Johnson.”

From what I've seen, Johnson lies as he breathes, with consummate ease. He couldn’t even steer a straight line with the Conservative manifesto which was launched on Sunday. Given that its most substantial policies concern potholes and hospital parking, an announcement about a genuine increase in the number of nurses being recruited could and should have been a headline-grabber. But as so often with Johnson, it grabbed the headlines in all the wrong ways. It was only a matter of hours before anyone with a calculator and some knowledge of the NHS would expose the grubby statistics behind the lie.

Nurses and GPs can't be ordered up like pizzas, however much Johnson and Matt Hancock like to pretend they can. So the improbable figure of 50,000 nurses included 18,500 nurses who would be persuaded not to leave the NHS and 12,000 shamelessly poached from overseas, assuming they can – or would even want to – navigate our vicious immigration policies.

The problem with a leader who lies – as the Republicans have discovered with Donald Trump – is that everyone downstream has to follow the party line or be cast into the wilderness. Thus Nicky Morgan twisted herself into a pretzel defending the indefensible on breakfast TV.

The culture secretary looked like a rabbit in the headlights as the interviewers destroyed her arguments about the extra nurses. She had of course had some practice recently, arguing on another TV show that the fact that the Tories disguised their Twitter account as a fact-checking site “was of no interest to anyone outside the Westminster bubble”.

So it seems to me that herein lies the problem. For some politicians – following their leaders – lying has become the norm. The Conservatives have lied systematically about the NHS since they came to power. Lies about the money they have spent or intend to spend, lies about building 40 new hospitals when they only mean to refurbish half a dozen, lies about trolley waits and record waiting lists for surgery.

A video made by NHS staff pointing this out went viral before the 2017 election and was credited with contributing to Mrs May’s dire results. There is another one going the rounds now which is racking up millions of views.

The public is certainly more likely to believe frontline NHS staff over Conservative politicians any day, and the politicians only have themselves to blame. After so much “fake news”, people wouldn’t believe Johnson at this stage if he told the truth.

When someone asked him whether the truth was important during the recent leaders’ debate, people in the audience laughed and applauded. It was a damning moment, so much so that it appeared to have been omitted from news bulletins.

Voters and in particular patients deserve the truth about the health system they depend on. In my view, Johnson betrays staff, patients and his own party when he lies about the NHS. Former Conservative MP and columnist Matthew Parris denounced Johnson in a blistering attack two years ago, accusing him of being dishonest, vacuous, sly and incompetent. The NHS, and the country, deserve better.

Dr Jacky Davis is a consultant radiologist and a founding member of Keep Our NHS Public