“Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” These exquisite lines come at the end of “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” by John Keats, their circularity and essence encompassing moral, ethical and artistic philosophies to frame, inform and infuse our lives.

Art is often accused of being unrelated to real life, yet our judicial process exists on the foundational phrase: “The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” Elevating evidenced, reasoned, considered truth as the arbiter of justice. The Post Office Horizon scandal has come to be known as one of Britain’s greatest miscarriages of justice. Over 900 sub-postmasters were falsely accused of stealing; many were bankrupted or imprisoned, including a pregnant woman, due to errors in the Horizon computer system installed by the Post Office itself. The sustained and determined failure of the Post Office to acknowledge the malfunction lasted almost 16 years, in which time they zealously prosecuted sub-postmasters, destroying hundreds of lives. Only a long and arduous fight-back by a group of sub-postmasters forced the truth to be recognised.

Truth may be important to most people, but is certainly despised as a non-essential by others. Those others who may want to exercise authoritarian power, avoid transparency and accountability, undermine the rule of law and sow discord and fear in society. Those others who deploy misstatements, false facts, and obfuscation to deny truth and therefore reality. Creating manufactured narratives to plant distrust and engineer opinion.

“Misinformation.” Begins Stephen Fry in the following Tik-Tok video, “What a polite little word for something so utterly corrosive. A deliberate distortion of truth, a mischief of manipulation, a poison dripped into the well of public discourse and yet it spreads faster than wildfire…”

“Fact checkers aren’t the enemy of free speech,” Stephen Fry states, “they are its guardians, ensuring that debate is grounded in reality, rather than fantasy. So, before you hit that share button, pause, reflect, verify. The truth is worth it.”

As long ago as 1710,  Jonathan Swift wrote: “Besides, as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…”

Truth and its functions, such as evidenced information and thoughtful reasoning are under attack. Misdirection, fake news and their like, have multiplied and gathered strength, an invisible army eroding the essential values and institutions of democracy, such as the separation of powers, academic freedom and free speech. Truth has become endangered. Thereby endangering us all.

In the U.S., Trump and his acolytes are providing a real-life demonstration of how to demolish truth, take control of a country and exploit its people and resources for the benefit of millionaires, billionaires and the secret enrichment of politicians. Unfortunately, what happens across the Atlantic often finds its way to Britain.

Here in the UK, the ultra-right-wing Reform Party, trading on fear and division continues to grow and gather support, capitalising on people’s desperation and disappointments. The truth is that Britain’s historic inequalities are directly linked to its class system. Poverty and deprivation have increased as mostly Tory governments (whose politicians generally come from private schools and wealthy backgrounds) have diluted their own policies; such as ‘Levelling up,’ because those dispossessed areas are never going to vote for them.

When governments fail to alleviate need, demagogues step in. The Reform Party have consistently used exaggeration and fabrication to blame immigrants and asylum seekers as the cause of people’s hardships, lack of housing and jobs. Deceitful, racist tactics which undermine truth and therefore democracy; laying the groundwork for authoritarianism, and the ‘capture’ of a voting bloc. Callously pushing people into more insecure and harder lives.

Truth isn’t an abstract idea or a moral luxury. With truth comes trust, an essential component to prosperity, well-being and social cohesion. In countries where corruption is dominant, bribery tends to be rife, the rule of law selectively applied, and poverty at a high level. In contrast, in the Nordic countries, the value of truth in governance and social institutions creates a sense of protection, morality and security. Switzerland tops the ranking of the most trustworthy nations. Not only is it one of the wealthiest countries in the world, Switzerland enjoys well distributed political power, a social security system, and is committed to gender and racial equality. Its citizens have won more Nobel Prizes and registered more patents per capita than many other countries.

I’m sure far fewer Swiss people have to resort to food banks than in Britain, where over 2800 food banks currently exist. A shameful statistic for the 6^th richest country in the world. The result of systemic inequalities ignored or glossed over by successive governments. ‘Speaking truth to power,’ is a diagnostic tool, whether utilised in research reports, conference speeches or direct meetings with decision makers. Unfortunately, few politicians have the guts and grit to tackle the truths that will have been presented to them. Allowing the problems of poverty and social division to fester and increase, thus providing a perfect breeding ground for disinformation, manipulation, racism and Islamophobia, utilised by those wanting to incite vengeance and violence. As Britain saw in the riots of 2024.

Who can forget the shocking scenes of cars burning, police officers attacked and the horrific attempt to set fire to a hotel housing asylum seekers. Or the sight of children amongst the mob. Disturbingly, one father (who was later imprisoned) had taken his seven-year-old son with him.

“The broadest explanation for the riots is that they are a response to underlying poverty and deprivation” (Emeritus professor Paul Whiteley, in a report for The Loop).

Truth is necessary for justice to be delivered, for educational institutions to develop and transmit knowledge, and for a free and reliable press. Truth produces an informed citizenry, the resistance to wannabe dictators and tyrants. Language, its communicator, the most powerful skill we possess, facilitating critical reasoning, comparisons, and thoughtful discourse, is necessarily a sensitive, nuanced and complex construction, vulnerable to distortion, corruption, and hi-jacking. Truth demands vigilance, protection, examination of the words being used.

Mistruths, inveracity, and gaslighting are the linguistic arsenal of those wishing to control others. Not just politicians, influencers, but all the bullies who persecute their partners, family members and colleagues through psychological manipulation. Not only should language be used with care, but it must also be examined for deceit, malice, or treachery. Truth may be silenced or buried by the self-interested, precisely because it’s essential for normal life, business and a nation’s infrastructure. We need to know that our roads have been built to the necessary specifications, buildings constructed with the appropriate materials, and financial interactions are fair and verifiable. The burnt-out shell of Grenfell Tower, where 72 people lost their lives, still stands in London, a rebuke to dishonest business.

In an AI world, the need to distinguish lies from truth will become ever more important. Truth should be the steely foundation, the girders and pillars on which a society can rely. To know that what you’re seeing is true, whether it’s a person or an event, is essential for functioning lawfully, productively and considerately. Truth will be ever more important as the litmus test between facts and falsehoods, opinions and concoctions.

Facts matter. Truth is where they come from. “We cannot co-operate if we don’t see the same facts.” Barack Obama said recently in a talk at Hamilton College in the US. “If I say this is an elephant and not a table,” touching the table he was sitting next to, “you’ll think I’m crazy, so we can’t have a discussion. But if I say this is a table, we can have a conversation about it.”

Truth is ever vulnerable to denial and suppression. Particularly by those who want to keep secret what they do. In the age of information technology where messages and images can ping from one side of the globe to the other in seconds, the Israeli state has been able to hide a savage and brutal genocide. Killing journalists, refusing entry to international delegations and traducing every reasonable criticism as antisemitism.  Nevertheless, the thundering jets, exploding bombs, and towers of smoke, expose the nature of Israel’s war in Gaza. Truth still seeps out, bears witness.

Our beautiful, fragile, green-blue planet can provide for all of us, if we acknowledge our responsibility to look after it instead of inflicting irrevocable damage. The climate change deniers can attack climate change science as much as they want, rubbish it from dawn to dusk. But nature, the greatest force in the world, works to its own dynamic, its own inexorable logic and propulsion. Nature will not be asking the climate deniers’ permission to unleash devastating floods, uncontrollable wildfires or disastrous tropical cyclones. As ever, it’ll be the ordinary people who’ll suffer the consequences, and those who have the least will lose the most.

Truth and untruths shape our lives: transmitted from birth onwards, through beliefs, traditions, education, myths, science, culture, art, religious or secular ideas and political policies. Nonetheless, truth supports the moral arc of the universe, utilising facts, expertise, wisdom, knowledge, talent, courage, ideals, and above all, humanity. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”