DID you feel it? Late on Thursday evening, there were reports of an atmospheric event causing widespread disruption across the UK.
There were power outages, traffic chaos and, alarmingly, birds could be seen falling from the sky.
The frenzied speculation about what could have caused such strange events ended when an ITV interview was aired in which the Prime Minister told his biggest lie to date.
He said – wait for it – that he had never told a lie during his political career.
“I may have got things wrong, I may have been mistaken, but I’ve never tried to deceive people about the way I see things.”
The barefaced cheek of THAT man making THAT statement was just too much for our planet to cope with.
Liar, liar, the country is on fire.
Looking back at the election campaign this week, I fear we are in danger of developing a tolerance for bullshit. This isn’t the “Brexit election” by any stretch of the imagination – it’s the misinformation election.
It’s gone so much further than the usual bluff and bluster we already factor in when it comes to politicians being economical with the truth to try to win votes.
We’ve reached a new low where some Conservative politicians feel absolutely no shame in replacing fiction with fact, despite their failure to fool anybody.
Take Nicky Morgan, for example. Earlier in the week, she was interviewed on Good Morning Britain about the Conservative Party manifesto commitment to recruit 50,000 more nurses to the NHS.
“There will be overall, and we are very, very clear on this, 50,000 more nurses in 10 years’ time than there are today.”
Except, there won’t be. Because included in that figure are 19,000 new nurses who are not new nurses at all – they are existing NHS nurses. Even when faced with the red-faced fury of Piers Morgan – who, for once, had the sympathy of the nation – Nicky Morgan continued her topsy-turvy, LSD-trip of an answer.
She explained, patiently, as though she was the Very Stable Genius and we were the dicks, that those 19,000 might leave the NHS, but the Tories will make sure they don’t.
So, they count double. Or have identical twins with a nursing degree, or something.
It takes an almost farcical commitment to lying to make yourself look so utterly deranged on live television.
But she wasn’t the only loyal foot soldier who was willing to sacrifice their integrity on the altar of Boris Britain.
Matt Hancock got in on the action too. His detachment from reality during his own Nursegate interview was so unnerving that at one point I was trying to decipher a cry for help code in his blinking pattern.
They just can’t help themselves. We’ve all met dweebs like Hancock. He was that wee boy at school who would tell everybody that the scar from his appendix removal was caused by a fight he got into with a crocodile on his way back from karate practice (he was a blackbelt too, naturally).
Boris Johnson doesn’t even have the good grace to spout his lies in person anymore.
He gets his minions to do that for him and they go along with it, devotees of the world’s poshest cult (yes, I said cult).
He’s lied to the Queen, he’s lied to his partners, he’s lied to every boss he’s ever had and now he’s in the highest office in the land, lying to the public and trying to keep his hands clean while doing it.
He’s been hiding away. Too feart to do a half-hour interview with his old Spectator pal Andrew Neil. Too full of self-doubt about his own intellect to agree to share a stage with Nicola Sturgeon.
When Johnson dodged Channel 4’s leaders’ debate on climate change this week, his cowardice was clear for all to see. I can understand why he didn’t turn up though. They say one of the biggest stresses on our planet is overpopulation. With all the children Boris Johnson has fathered, it’s no wonder the polar ice caps are melting.
I predict we’ll see more of the same in the final few weeks of this woeful campaign.
If that’s the way we are doing politics now, they should at least keep it entertaining.
If they insist on telling lies that are so easily disproven, then why not be a bit more ambitious with it?
Promise voters that everybody will receive a unicorn when we finally “get Brexit done”.
Say that a vote for the Conservatives is a vote for good red wine running freely from every tap. For a society full of abundance, fairness and equality.
Or, if you really want to push the limits of our tolerance for lies, you could deploy the big one. Say – again – that Scotland is Better Together.
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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