Here is a magnificent speech by Peter Oborne on the collapse of Integrity in British public life, delivered at the Centre for Policy Studies on 4 March.

He gets to the heart of many things, including the N-word:

We have abandoned the idea that there is an independent reality which is out there and subject to independent verification – and adopted instead a different kind of political epistemology. The purpose of public argument has moved right away from truths that can be proven to narratives that can be constructed.

This is formally recognised by the ruling elite. Peter Mandelson, one of the inventors of the new politics, speaks of the need to  create the truth’ …

So we have entered a postmodern public discourse populated by rival truth claims. I will try and sketch out the effects of this discourse on British government. The core insight is that appearance and reality have become identical. The surface counts for everything. Government therefore ceases to be about getting things done – it’s about being seen to get things done.

To give just one example: quite a large part of the civil service is no longer dedicated to administrative tasks. All departments now contain a group of dedicated individuals whose role – though it is never described in exactly this way – is actually the manipulation of outcomes to ensure that government targets are met.

And this:

If the Conservatives are to govern effectively over the next decade they need to turn their back on a philosophical doctrine that first took root in French philosophical salons in the 1970s. Instead of constructing the truth, as New Labour has constantly sought to do, they can start to reclaim the truth, and look back to their own roots in the British empirical tradition.

For an incoming Conservative government this means two things: one a matter of detail, and one an issue of deep principle. First of all, the Conservatives must dismantle the apparatus of postmodern government. Above all that means restoring the administrative function of the British civil service and downgrading its dominant presentational function.

Truth will out.