“It’s not the lie that bothers me, it’s the insult to my intelligence that I find offensive”: An investigation into the use of lies and insults in political discourse during the 2024 UK General Election on the basis of the BBC 7-party debate

Abstract

In the mid 2010s political discourse was subject to a downward spiral as lies and insults have become prevalent firstly as a consequence of the Brexit Referendum in the UK and then the election of Donald Trump as President of the USA. This spiral in the UK theoretically came to an end with the demise of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, and the return to ‘grown up’ politics promised by Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt among others. Thus, the 2024 UK General Election seemed to offer the perfect opportunity to assess the extent to which the dishonesty and insult that characterised the populist Johnson’s premiership had fallen out of fashion. 

The paper analyses the BBC’s seven-party debate, which took place on June 7^th, 2024, using the methodology of political discourse analysis to investigate the extent to which representatives of the seven main parties competing in the election campaign were prepared to resort to lies and insult as part of their rhetorical arsenal. The results indicate that the Conservatives and Remain were particularly prone to the deployment of both lies and insults, but, somewhat surprisingly, the Scottish National Party were equally liable to slip in the odd embellishment of the truth.