CAROLINE LUCAS

There ought to be laws on politicians lying. They ought to be held accountable for deliberately misleading the people they are elected to serve. Political campaigns ought to have a higher benchmark than the Advertising Standards Authority. These keep UK advertising “legal, decent, honest and truthful”. But no such standards are required of politicians. They can print what they like on a bus and say what they wish on TV. Because the truth isn't what people voted for. They elected a professional liar as Prime Minister. A man repeatedly sacked from jobs for inventing fiction that serves his own inflated ego. Even the leader of the opposition, an ex-human rights lawyer no less, is busy misquoting his predecessor and failing to make good on his pledge to be the ‘unity candidate’.

So, it is of zero surprise to anyone that trust is the casualty of this trend towards fabrication. After Dominic Cummings won fame as a manipulator of the Brexit referendum, he admitted that he used a fictional tale of funding the NHS to tip the vote