Bending the truth?

Anyone's CV is bound to feature at least one instance of exaggeration. A couple of months' data entry during a university summer holiday, for example, becomes 'Advanced Information Management'; or a stint as a bartender is generously rendered as 'Senior Beverage Facilitator'. A smattering of words in a foreign language gives you an 'intermediate' level and a suspicious gap - apparently the worst thing that can appear on a CV - is erased by tweaking a couple of dates. Is this harmless tinkering with the truth, or lying? Where's the boundary between acceptable exaggeration and pure fabrication?

These are the questions raised by the recent wave of CV-related resignations among Spanish politicians. Neither Noelia Núñez, previously said to be a 'rising star' within the PP, nor Ana Milán, a member of Madrid's PP-led authority, possessed the academic qualifications they claimed to. Nor did Vox's Ignacio Higuera, part of Extremadura's government, or José Ángel, a PSOE minister in Valencia who faked a degree to secure a civil service position.

All of these cases go beyond semantic vagueness or misrepresentation of actual experience. They lay claim to knowledge or expertise, represented by a formal qualification, that is in reality lacking.

Other scandals centring on politicians' CVs are not so clear-cut. Take Giuseppe Conte, leader of Italy's Five Star Movement and the country's prime minister from 2018 to 2021. Just before being installed in the latter position, Conte came under fire for claiming on his CV to have 'furthered' his legal studies at New York University, among other institutions. It emerged that he had been given permission to use the university's law library between 2008 and 2014.

It might be argued that claiming to have continued your studies at an institution implies having received a degree from it. But it's also an acceptable way of saying that you've used its facilities to conduct research, or that you've been briefly affiliated to it in some other informal manner. Unlike the Spanish politicians named above, Conte didn't claim to have formal qualifications from any of the institutions to which he had a connection. He misrepresented the truth, perhaps, but he didn't lie.

Back in February, the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves was also in trouble over her professional background. Despite her claims to have spent ten years at the Bank of England, the BBC revealed she had only worked there for five-and-a-half years. Every time she said something like 'I spent a decade working as an economist at the Bank of England and loved it' (in a 2021 interview), she was lying.

You might think differently, but for me that puts Reeve with the Spanish politicians, rather than with Conte. Now if you'll excuse me, I must go and upgrade my CV. I've thought of a few things that I wouldn't mind having on there.