Jeff Randall diagnoses Gordon Brown's difficulties: telling porkies.
Whether it's on crime, education, taxation, truancy, health, child poverty, public finances, economic growth rates, domestic elections, the European treaty (aka constitution) or the most obscene distortion of all, weapons of mass destruction, almost nothing we are told seems to bear scrutiny.
When examined closely, time and again, there are omissions and distortions, fudge and mudge. Veracity exists, but only as a theoretical concept – nowhere more so than in the emotionally charged debate on immigration.
Yesterday's Today programme provided another striking example of how forces of fantasy are twisting the facts. Figures from the Office for National Statistics suggest that the population of Slough is decreasing. For those who live in this immigration hot-spot, that's an incomprehensible mistake.
No-one can believe them, their policies or their 'results'. That is why the Tories still have a lead over Labour in the polls.