An underrated element in the success of the Conservative Party is that most people work from the assumption that other people are basically honest, and exceptions can be spotted. Day to day it's a good shortcut - liars get caught out in the close-up world of the everyday.

"Did you do the thing?" "Yes, I did" [Thing is obviously not done] = this person is untrustworthy. But in what we call - confusingly - public life someone who is willing to lie shamelessly in ways that serve the interests of the rich and powerful has a massive advantage.

The mechanisms by which to judge the veracity of claims, and hence the trustworthiness of speakers, are kept away from general understanding, let alone oversight. So people assume that, if the Conservative Party was incompetent and morally insane this would be widely broadcast.

The truth - that the Conservatives are utterly untrustworthy - implies that the people who claim to hold them to account are also utterly untrustworthy, which is not something that features much in news and current affairs reporting. And, you know, it sounds a little wacky.

So you hear a Conservative Minister lying away, confidently and fluently, and you think, well, they sound plausible and the interviewer is treating them as a good faith interlocutor, so I guess I should, too.

There's no way to defeat the far right that doesn't include a massive democratisation of the systems of communication on which we all rely. Without it, the public world will remain a mystery bursting at the seams with monsters.

[Extremely JFK voice] "We choose to reform the media in this decade, and to do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard ..." I mean, people have walked on the moon, how hard can it be to fire the Conservative Party into the sun?