WHAT’S the matter with a few lies? Isn’t truth a little overrated these days? Surely, when lies are coming at us like summer midgies, biting at the bare flesh of our sensibilities, the best thing to do is cover yourself in the TCP of quiet acceptance, pull on a hoodie and get on with life?

Last week Brexit Secretary Dominic Rabb condemned the idea that the Government would stockpile food. This week, well, we’re now planning for that contingency. More BS from the mouth of the BS emerged when he declared Britain could refuse to pay its divorce bill to Brussels, if a trade deal weren’t concluded. Yet, in April the auditor general had already shot down that possibility.

As the culture of government mis-truthing grows, so does the proliferation of Alan B’Stards. Once, if a politician were found to have lied to Parliament, or constituents, they would be P45d. Even the saintly Harold Wilson’s 1967 alternative facting didn’t go unpunished after he told Britain the 14 per cent devalued pound in their pocket would still be worth the same.

But we’re accepting we have Pinocchio politicians. Boris Johnson, for example, flips out fibs as easily as he turns over his eggs in the morning. The man once sacked by The Times for porky telling in his first ever front page story, made it onto become shadow arts minister. And then he was sacked for lying about his private life. (Not a morality issue; it was for Tommy Sheridan-ing his own party). Yet Johnson returned to create a series of “Euromyths,” from the shape of bananas to the £350m a week headed to the NHS. And we allow this mendacious creature to pick up a public wage packet every week.

Now, there’s an argument we all lie. But this isn’t true. (Maybe an odd tweak to a CV, or a little white lie – “No, there’s no way you should consider a facelift/hair transplant”. ) There’s also an argument it’s sometimes better to lie, and this can be the truth; saying to a four-year-old “If you drink Irn Bru, your teeth will instantly fall into the glass” is acceptable.

But the worry is national-scale lying is such common practice we’re almost smiling about it, as we once did of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. The worry is we’re becoming immune to the lies of our allies, the US, and to the likes of Steve Bannon when he says Donald Trump has never lied. We just grin. Ah, yes, Steve. It was just bad grammar.

Yet, is it a lie if the lying B’Stard perpetrating the lie is unaware they are lying?

Trump recently announced: “Just remember what you’re saying and what you’re reading is not really what’s happening.” Now, this could mean a) he’s a psychopath, or b) playing with our minds? Or c) he’s far less the dimwit we think, indeed hinting of a Pirandello notion, endorsing the Italian playwright’s theme of truth being relative, that if an audience believes in the argument of a character; if he says it, that makes it true?

Of course, the Trump answer is a). But the danger is we’re beginning to accept the concept of truth to be debatable. It isn’t. We’re beginning to accept the idea lying B’Stards should go unpunished. They shouldn’t.

Machiavelli, in The Prince, argued that lying and effective leadership go hand in hand. But that was in the days before Twitter where a world can learn of deception in an instant. (And just because lies allowed Nixon to bomb Vietnam or Britain to invade Iraq that that doesn’t justify the action.)

The truth is we desperately need to hold the liars to account. The Twilight Zone’s creator Rod Serling didn’t have his space head on when he wrote: “Every Superstate has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and the truth is a menace.” He may have been alluding to the Cold War but his concerns are entirely relevant today.

That’s why we need to call out the liars. Not the Billy Liars, the harmless fantasists, but those who control our lives. We need to sack them. Remove them. Punish them. If politicians such as the DUP’s Ian Paisley jnr don’t own up to taking a couple of freebies courtesy of the the Sri Lankan government (having lobbied against the UN plans to investigate human right’s abuses on the island) it’s right they should be suspended. At least.

Let’s not treat the politicians who swerve the truth as four-year-olds with chocolate smeared faces, who deny all knowledge of their sister’s birthday cake. They are playing with our lives.

Let’s not accept Iraq-like sins of omission. And let’s go heavy on obfuscation, which is really lie-lite. Jeremy Corbyn says he would vote Remain, but we all know that sits at odds with his strategy of state control and nationalisation. Let’s call him out.

We need our politicians to be Jimmy Carters. And those who aren’t should suffer Dolores Umbridge. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the professor was perhaps a little sadistic in having I Must Not Tell Lies scratched onto HP’s hand. But this principle is what we have to accept. We can’t sit around waiting for our Robert Muellers to do their magic. If, as claimed, democracy dies in the darkness, it starts to suffocate when the truth is strangled.