I am exhausted. Not in the physical sense—though watching the hamster wheel of political incompetence spin does induce a certain physiological lethargy—but in the spiritual sense. I am exhausted by the predictability of the grift. I am exhausted by the assumption that we, the unwashed masses, possess the memory retention of a goldfish with a traumatic brain injury.

This week, the grand theater of the United Kingdom’s Parliament provided yet another masterclass in the art of the bureaucratic flinch. The subject at hand was the Hillsborough Law, a piece of legislation theoretically designed to enforce a 'duty of candour' on public officials. For the uninitiated, or those fortunate enough to ignore the granular details of legislative failure, this law is intended to stop the state from lying to you when its incompetence kills you. It is named after the Hillsborough disaster, a tragedy where ninety-seven people died and the machinery of the state spent decades gaslighting the survivors. The premise is simple: if you are a public servant, you should not be allowed to cover up your mistakes. You must tell the truth. It sounds almost quaint, doesn't it? A law requiring honesty. One might ask why we need a specific statute for this, given that honesty is theoretically the baseline of civilized society, but we are talking about politicians and police chiefs here. Baselines do not apply.

However, just as the curtain was about to rise on the debate for this noble legislative crusade, the government yanked the cord. The debate was pulled. The schedule was cleared. The MPs were sent back to their subsidized bars to mutter into their lukewarm pints. Why? Because the government, in its infinite wisdom and spinelessness, faced a rebellion from its own backbenches.

It turns out that the 'duty of candour' came with a rather significant asterisk. The proposed law included caveats for the security services and intelligence agencies. The logic, transmitted from the shadows of Whitehall to the empty suits in the Cabinet, is that while a local police chief must admit when he blunders, the boys in the trench coats at MI5 and MI6 must retain their divine right to deceive. The government’s position essentially boils down to this: Truth is mandatory, unless the lie is classified.

This is the point where my cynicism, usually a bottomless well, somehow finds a new depth. The irony is so thick you could choke on it. A law born from a desire to end cover-ups was being drafted with a pre-installed cover-up mechanism for the most powerful arms of the state. It is a perfect encapsulation of the modern political mindset: accountability is for the little people. Accountability is for the nurse who misreads a chart or the council worker who fills a pothole incorrectly. But for the architects of the surveillance state? For the entities that operate in the dark? They require an exemption from reality itself.

The backlash from the Labour MPs is the only mildly amusing part of this wretched farce. It is adorable that they are surprised. They act as if they have been betrayed, clutching their pearls and gasping that the security services might want to avoid scrutiny. Did they really think the deep state would simply sign a form promising to be good boys and girls? Did they honestly believe that a government—any government, Red or Blue—would willingly strip itself of the power to obfuscate in the name of 'National Security'?

National Security is the ultimate trump card. It is the phrase used to shut down inquiry, to silence dissent, and to justify the unjustifiable. By attempting to bake an exemption for the intelligence community into the Hillsborough Law, the government admitted the quiet part out loud. They admitted that there are two tiers of justice. There is the justice for the commoner, where facts matter, and there is the justice for the state, where facts are malleable putty to be shaped by 'security concerns.'

So, the debate was pulled. They ran away. faced with the realization that their own MPs might actually have a shred of conscience—or at least a fear of their constituents—the leadership chose to retreat. They will regroup, no doubt. They will send the whips out to twist arms and promise favors. They will redraft the language, burying the exemption in denser legalese, hoping that fatigue will set in and the bill will pass with the loophole intact but invisible to the naked eye.

And what of the public? We are left to watch this spectacle with the weary resignation of passengers on a train driven by a drunkard. The Hillsborough Law was supposed to be a watershed moment, a declaration that the era of the cover-up was over. Instead, it has become a monument to the permanence of the cover-up. The very act of stalling the debate proves the necessity of the law, just as the exemption proves the government's unwillingness to enact it properly.

They delay, they obfuscate, and they carve out exceptions for the powerful, all while looking into the camera and promising transparency. It is grotesque. It is insulting. And it is exactly what I expected. The only 'duty' these people recognize is the duty to protect their own skins. The rest of us are just collateral damage in their endless game of risk management. If you want the truth, don't look to Parliament. They pulled the debate on truth because they haven't figured out how to spin it yet.