Post-Truth Politics?

[Skepticemea]

On the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, the following exchange took place between the interviewer, John Humphries, and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Ian Duncan Smith. It's regarding criticism aimed at him from the UK Statistics Authority with regard to his misuse of official numbers to back up (statistically, at least) spurious claims:

IDS: No. What they said was that you can't absolutely prove that those two things are connected.

JH: Your statement is "unsupported by the official statistics published by your own department".

IDS: Yes, but by the way you can't disprove what I said either.

JH: You can make any claim on that basis.

IDS: Well, I am. I believe this to be right. I believe that we are already seeing people go back to work who were not going to go back to work until they were short of the cap.

I've noticed a phrase within the pages of the commentariat that seems to be doing the rounds. That phrase is "post-truth politics". IDS's position appears to be post-belief.

 

[The Don]

There was a similar exchange on BBC Radio 5.

Sadly political dogma is not new or confined to one end of the political spectrum. In the case of the benefit reforms they are IMO a response to dog-whistle politics rather than a genuine attempt to address a problem which may apply to a tiny minority of people.

 

[dudalb]

God, that exchange sounds like a Monty Python routine....

 

[Puppycow]

Sounds like a fairly run-of-the-mill political claim:

If the economy does anything good, the party in power will take credit for it and point to some policy of their's that supposedly made it happen. Employment is up? It's because we cut taxes (or insert other policy here). The economy grew? It's because of our policy X.