Peter Oborne > Quotes

“Ambrose Bierce’s famous description of politics as ‘the conduct of public affairs for private advantage’.”
― Peter Oborne, The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism

“Future generations are bound to ask why Johnson’s record as a liar, charlatan and cheat did not prove fatal on his way into Downing Street.”
― Peter Oborne, The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism

“A free press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that free men prize; it is the most dangerous foe of tyranny… where free institutions are indigenous to the soil and men have the habit of liberty, the press will continue to be the Fourth Estate, the vigilant guardian of the rights of the ordinary citizen.’ SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL”
― Peter Oborne, The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism

“Political lying is a form of theft. It takes away people’s democratic rights. Voters cannot make fair judgements on the basis of falsehoods. Truth has been taken out of the public domain.”
― Peter Oborne, The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism

“Politicians and media portray the marchers as anti-British. In truth they profoundly represent British values as thes have traditionally been understood: belief in fairness, tolerance, the rule of law. Standing up for the underdog. Compassion, kindness, a sense of civic responsibility and what George Orwell called decency. A belief in community, solidarity, and human rights, and a conviction that we owe a duty not just to ourselves and our own communities but to all human beings.”
― Peter Oborne, Complicit: Britain's Role in the Destruction of Gaza

“Indeed it has been painfully clear since October 2023 that those dominating the national conversation on Gaza lack the knowledge to scrutinise Israeli claims. British TV and radio studios are chock full of loudmouth presenters with big salaries but negligible understanding. Experts who have mastered the history of the Israel-Palestine dispute tend to be excluded from public discussion.”
― Peter Oborne, Complicit: Britain's Role in the Destruction of Gaza

“The British prime minister has repeatedly lied. About economic policy, about Brexit, about trade, about borders, about the Covid pandemic. He has lied to voters, to ministers, to journalists, to Parliament. He has lied to adults. He has lied to children.”
― Peter Oborne, The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism

“The 2018 March of Return bears a tragic comparison with the Sharpeville massacre in March 1960, when an unarmed crowd protesting apartheid's notorious Pass Laws was mown down by South African police. Officially sixty-nine people were killed (the real count was probably higher) and many others injured as police suddenly opened fire.

The killings were condemned in a United Nations resolution, became catalyst in the African National Congress' shift from nonviolence to armed resistance, and led swiftly to South Africa's international isolation. It was a milestone towards the fall of apartheid.

Mirroring Sharpeville, the March of Return was a historic gamble by Palestinians from all walks of life in Gaza on the sincerity of the international community's claimed commitments to law and humanity. As the Palestinian writer Yousef Munayyer had previously argued, Palestinian non-violence requires global non-silence.

For week after week, ordinary Palestinians gathered along that perimeter fence and marched unarmed towards the rows of Israeli snipers stationed behind it. Their only armour, their only protection, was the willingness of the international community to restrain Israel's hand. What happened? Israel shot thousands with live ammunition, as Britain along with other Israeli allies did nothing.”
― Peter Oborne, Complicit: Britain's Role in the Destruction of Gaza

“Their treatment of Native Americans as savages”
― Peter Oborne, The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam

“Politicians and media portray the marchers as anti-British. In truth they profoundly represent British values as these have traditionally been understood: belief in fairness, tolerance, the rule of law. Standing up for the underdog. Compassion, kindness, a sense of civic responsibility and what George Orwell called decency. A belief in community, solidarity, and human rights, and a conviction that we owe a duty not just to ourselves and our own communities but to all human beings.

British journalists and politicians, acting in a de facto alliance with the far right, have painted the marchers as supporters of terrorism and enemies of civilisation-for having the audacity to march against the livestreamed slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. These accusations carry no weight. The peace marchers have been supporting a global moral order that is under attack.”
― Peter Oborne, Complicit: Britain's Role in the Destruction of Gaza

“the game required the ball to be hit out of the ground altogether, not merely over the boundary as is the case today.43”
― Peter Oborne, Wounded Tiger: A History of Cricket in Pakistan

“This far-right support for Israel was the culmination of long-term trends. The US-led 'Global War on Terror' had accustomed large numbers of people to think of Muslims as security threats: terrorists, infiltrators, or rapists. British Muslims became the enemy within; a dangerous social element that had to be subjected to special forms of surveillance and control. The far right exploited these fears to its advantage as demonising Islam and Muslims became its primary venture. Again and again the dominant political parties failed to challenge such ideas. At the same time, antisemitism was gradually redefined to mean criticism of Israel rather than animus or discrimination against Jews. This conceptual hijacking allowed the far right to posture as an opponent of antisemitism. And if the far right opposed antisemitism-well, perhaps it wasn't racist after all.”
― Peter Oborne, Complicit: Britain's Role in the Destruction of Gaza

“Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people turned out week after week for months on end to demonstrate, occupy, and take action against British complicity. These heroic efforts vindicated the basic decency of the British public. But government policy barely changed.

Foreign policy in Britain is conducted in a closed world. It is made by a small elite on behalf of opaque interests. Gaza has shown that where state security is invoked, the media defers and parties converge.

The insulation of ruling bodies from public opinion left British citizens powerless to rescue the people of Gaza. Preventing future outrages by our leaders calls for more than legal accountability. It requires bringing democracy to Britain's state and society, whose governing institutions are now indelibly disgraced.”
― Peter Oborne, Complicit: Britain's Role in the Destruction of Gaza

“British journalists and politicians, acting in a de facto alliance with the far right, have painted the marchers as as supporters of terrorism and enemies of civilisation-for having the audacity to march against the livestreamed slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. These accusations carry no weight. The peace marchers have been supporting a global moral order that is under attack.”
― Peter Oborne, Complicit: Britain's Role in the Destruction of Gaza

“In 2011 the Cameron government changed the law to make it harder to issue arrest warrants involving universal jurisdiction — more evidence that British complicity with Israeli atrocities dates back long before October 7.”
― Peter Oborne, Complicit: Britain's Role in the Destruction of Gaza

“I suspect strongly that he hoped for a narrow defeat after an exciting campaign. That would have been the ideal platform for his leadership ambitions and spared him the immense complex and detailed tasks of taking responsibility for the United Kingdom’s exit from the EU.”
― Peter Oborne, The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism

“The British media for the most part suppressed, played down or castigated the ICJ's momentous decision. The lead item on that evening's BBC News at Ten dealt with the latest of innumerable legal setbacks suffered by US President Donald Trump. There was no mention at all of the ICJ ruling in The Times, often referred to as a paper of record, until page 42 (page 3 of the International Section). No report either in the following day's Sunday Times, though buried in the paper was a denunciation of antisemitism in South Africa, the country that brought the case.”
― Peter Oborne, Complicit: Britain's Role in the Destruction of Gaza

“While there is no doubt that Johnson is both deceitful and amoral, the prime minister’s war on the truth is part of a wider attack on the pillars of British democracy: Parliament, the rule of law and the civil service.”
― Peter Oborne, The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism

“There is irrefutable evidence that Conservative Party lies and distortions in the 2019 election were cynical, systematic and prepared in advance. Johnson’s Conservatives deliberately set out to lie and to cheat their way to victory. The strategy triumphed.”
― Peter Oborne, The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism

“But it was Starmer's interview with LBC that proved disastrous. His assertion that 'Israel does have that right' to cut off power and water caused a storm. It was not until a week later that his spokesperson first attempted to clarify the remarks, with a bogus claim that the leader had been answering the specific question beforehand' about 'Israel having the right to defend itself' (in fact the question beforehand had been 'What is a proportionate response?) Nine days after the original comment Starmer was forced to row back his words himself, claiming on camera: 'I was not saying that Israel had the right to cut off water, food, fuel or medicines. This was not plausible-on the day of the LBC appearance he had given two other interviews in which he had answered the same question in a similar way, Nor did it explain why Labour shadow ministers Emily Thornberry and David Lammy had held Starmer's line during subsequent TV appearances, where they refused to say that the Israeli blockade was a violation of international law.”
― Peter Oborne, Complicit: Britain's Role in the Destruction of Gaza

“Cummings and Johnson are creatures of big money”
― Peter Oborne, The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism

“What are you?’ he asked. ‘And as we know”
― Peter Oborne, The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam

“For one thing, many Conservatives began to mobilise support for Israel as part of a broader domestic culture war. Even a casual reading of the Tory press shows how right-wing commentators have come to link support for the pro-Palestinian movement with an alleged lack of British patriotism, an embrace of multiculturalism, and support for mass immigration in general or Islam in particular. Conversely the British right presents support for Israel as part and parcel of a pro-American, hawkish, anti-immigrant battle for 'Western civilisation' against Islamic barbarism. This is at the softer end of a wider trend that has seen Israel increasingly championed by the global far right, which lauds that state's unabashed racist supremacism as a validation and vanguard of its own ethnonationalist project.”
― Peter Oborne, Complicit: Britain's Role in the Destruction of Gaza

“Israel has embarked on what looks uncomfortably like a campaign of massacre against journalists who were already in the Gaza Strip. According to one study, Israel killed more journalists in Gaza after October 7, 2023, than were killed in the US Civil War, both World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the Cambodia and Laos theatres), the Yugoslavia wars of the 1990s, and the post-2001 Afghanistan war combined. In this manner, Israel has ensured that as little information as possible would reach the world during its merciless attack on Gaza. We now know that Israel was responsible for the deaths of nearly 70 percent of all the world's journalists killed in 2024-the deadliest year for journalists since records began.”
― Peter Oborne, Complicit: Britain's Role in the Destruction of Gaza

“Large sections of the media repeated the lies promoted by Israeli and British politicians. Some produced fresh lies of their own. They twisted their reports in favour of the Israeli cause. For a long time, reports of Israeli atrocities appeared either in muted form or not at all. Hamas atrocities were exaggerated or fabricated. Dissident voices were suppressed. Across much of the media spectrum a general implicit consensus emerged: Israelis count and Palestinians don't.”
― Peter Oborne, Complicit: Britain's Role in the Destruction of Gaza

“In support of Israel, British politicians, backed by mainstream media, have given the green light to mass murder, assassination, torture, law-breaking, and chaos. In the process they have repudiated the international legal order that Britain herself helped establish to prevent a repetition of the horrors of World War Two.”
― Peter Oborne, Complicit: Britain's Role in the Destruction of Gaza

“In 2014, an Israeli national security expert, Eitan Shamir, noted tersely that Eizenkot had supported the destruction of Beirut's Dahiya suburb and called for attacking Lebanese infrastructure as an act of deterrence.”
― Peter Oborne, Complicit: Britain's Role in the Destruction of Gaza

“The LBC debacle taught Starmer that, henceforth, he must refuse to give an opinion on whether any specific Israeli action was legal. 'It's unwise for politicians to stand on stages like this, or to sit in television studios, and pronounce, day-by-day, which acts may or may not be in accordance with international law, he said in the Q&A after his anti-ceasefire speech on October 31, 2023. 'It's extremely unwise and I'm not going to get involved in that kind of exercise. But he had no such reservations pronouncing on the crimes of states that were not British allies-such as Russia, of whose transgressions in Ukraine he declared: "These are war crimes, these are abso- lutely appalling crimes.”
― Peter Oborne, Complicit: Britain's Role in the Destruction of Gaza

“In 1912, Viscount Helmsley, destined to die on the Western Front a few years later, became the first MP to use the term in Parliament when he warned against female ‘extremists’ who wanted to vote.”
― Peter Oborne, The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam

“Figures from the Electoral Commission reveal that the Conservatives spent £2.1 million on Facebook advertising alone during the 2017 election campaign.”
― Peter Oborne, The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism