“Politicians are not my favourite people,” an old friend of mine told me a few days ago.

She said it politely, almost apologetically, knowing that I’m a political obsessive, but underlying her words was cold contempt towards parliamentarians. Translation: they’re all liars.

Are they? Do all politicians routinely lie?

I would contest that. Some certainly do – Boris Johnson for instance – but most are more like Alan Clark once put it, economical with the actualité. That doesn’t make them monsters or sociopaths. It’s a very human trait to put the best spin on your own actions and intentions, but when it goes too far, as it often does in politics, objective truth is the casualty. Inconvenient facts are quietly suppressed. The result is an untrustworthy mash-up of aspiration and misrepresentation that’s fed to the electorate as promises.

In this election, it feels as if we’ve all taken a holiday from reality.

First we had the Tories, who are promising £17bn of tax cuts while improving public services (you’re having a laugh). Then we had Labour who plan magically to turbo-charge growth to avoid spending cuts arising from a financial black hole in their plans (pull the other one).

And now we have the SNP. At the party’s manifesto launch yesterday, John Swinney said a vote for the SNP was a vote for independence and that an independent Scotland would have a richly funded and staffed NHS with no public spending cuts (contrary to every credible analysis of Scotland’s post-independence finances). This while he attacked Labour over and over for failing to come clean about impending cuts.

John........

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