Centrally planned governments with ministries of truth cost nearly 100 million lives in the 20th century. People die when the government decides what’s the truth.
You're describing what happens without checks and balances. An independent judiciary routinely determines what is and isn't true. It is arguably one of the most fundamental functions of government to determine agreed upon truth.
People dies when politicians lie.
People dies when politicians decide what's the truth.
What is proposed here is that the truth is decided on a judicial trial based on facts and proofs.
If you think it will not work because the politicians control the judicial system, then this new law is 100% harmless, because they can already very easily arrest their opponent by just saying "they killed an old lady, let's have a trial to see if they are a murderer".
> decided on a judicial trial based on facts and proofs
Lawyers are expensive. Lawsuits are painful and time consuming.
If you can tie your opponent up in court - whether they win or lose becomes irrelevant - because you prevented them from spending time and money in the campaign. Further, if you have a friendly (or they have a hated) journalist, now you have coverage and headlines that are negative towards them.
Sure, but you can already tie your opponent up in court by accusing them to be drug dealers or having embezzled party money.
It does not happen, because there is a political cost of the public opinion of doing that.
If indeed your opponent has done nothing wrong, it will be obvious to the public and clear that you are a piece of sh*t. If you have enough power that you don't care about that, then you already have plenty of other ways, way easier and efficient, to get rid of your political opponents.
It’s much harder to do that, because it requires evidence of physical conduct. It’s much easier to just label something that’s an opinion to be an assertion of truth that can be prosecuted.
Don't miss the forest for the tree. There are plenty of sentences said by politicians that are easily ground for attacking them for libel. So, if you find excuses to reject some of my example, you can just do a little bit of effort and you will find yourself other examples where politicians had opportunities to attack their opponent based on a superficial accusation.
And also, this is not how it works: you cannot start a trial just by labeling an opinion to be an assertion of truth, the same way you cannot start a trial by just saying "I consider that grass blades are human, so my political opponent who has mown their lawn are murderers". You can bring the case to the authorities, but they will be the one deciding if it's an offense or not, and your political opponent will not be tied up in court until then.
> You can bring the case to the authorities, but they will be the one deciding if it's an offense or not, and your political opponent will not be tied up in court until then.
You forget that the "authorities" are appointed by politicians.
If you're left-wing, would you be comfortable being tried by someone appointed by Trump?
If you're right-wing, would you be comfortable being tried by someone appointed by Biden?
(Please forgive the US references, I'm not familiar with Welsh politics and don't know the names of politicians who would cause similar fear in political opponents there.)
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Edit:
Rather than arguing about hypotheticals or foreign equivalents, let's consider a specific case cited in TFA:
> During the debate, the Labour member Alun Davies accused the leader of the Tories in Wales, Andrew RT Davies, of tweeting a “direct lie” earlier on Tuesday that Labour want to pay illegal immigrants £1,600 a month.
In fact, Labour did pay £1,600 a month to certain immigrants who were seeking, but had not yet been granted, asylum. The only "lie" in question is the use of the term "illegal immigrants". That's the kind of blurry political line that Labour wants to criminalize.[1]
And it's a far, far more blurry line than murder. It's almost certain to be decided solely based on the political beliefs of the judge and jury.
I'm not talking about corruption here. I'm talking about the kind of controversial questions where "truth" is really open to debate.
> What is proposed here is that the truth is decided on a judicial trial based on facts and proofs.
Justice systems are not designed to decide on such broad and open-ended questions that arise in politics all the time. Questions like mask-wearing or not, WMDs in Iraq, Wuhan COVID origins, whether capitalism is harmful or not... does God exist... The list goes on. A much better proposal is to improve public education, fund journalism, enforce transparency in government, separation of corporate lobbying from the state, etc. A final arbiter on "truth" is chilling to democracy, and besides it, violates Godel's Incompleteness Theorems. It's also anti science.
Nobody is asking the justice systems to answer these questions.
I think the problem in the discussion here is that some people see that _in some cases_ we cannot tell what is true or not, and conclude, incorrectly, that the law we are talking about is pretending that in such case, someone will have to say "it's true" or "it's false". That's ridiculous.
If there is no way to know if it's true or false, THE JUSTICE SYSTEMS WILL SIMPLY SAYS "WE CANNOT TELL, CASE DISMISSED".
This idea that there will be a "final arbiter" that will flip a coin for open-ended question is just really really really stupid: the justice system IS ALREADY EXPOSED TO THAT and does not act in this stupid way.
For all of the examples you have given, there are other laws that would allow people to sue. If someone is forced to wear a mask by their boss, they may try to sue based on "abusive employer" laws. If someone believe the capitalism is harmful, they can certainly sue based on "assault and battery". ... They can try to sue, but they will get their case dismissed, not because the justice has answered the question on mask-wearing or whether capitalism is harmful, but because the justice has concluded it's an open question.
But it is not what the law we are talking about is about. It is not "deciding if X is true or false", it is "had the politician indeed the believable proofs that what they were saying was recognized as truth".
You make 2 errors:
1) you don't understand that the conclusion is not "this is true or this is false", but "this is true, this is false, or this is not possible to tell if it's true or false".
2) you don't understand that it is not because it is impossible to know if X is true or false that someone cannot lie about X. It is impossible for me to know how old you are, but if I say "I know that calf is 21 years old", then, I'm lying. Even if you are 21 years old, I have lied, because I did NOT know it. And it is easy to prove it, even if you are 21 years old, as you can demonstrate that I'm not in position to even know who you are.