People say that politicians are liars, but that’s not really true. Not generally, anyway. When they get an awkward question, they tend to avoid it or talk around it – a ‘politician’s answer’ is one that doesn’t answer the question. Which is annoying, yes, and evasive, but it’s not a lie. Lying would be easier and less obvious – and yet, they don’t do it.

But we’re governed by liars at the moment. Operation Yellowhammer – documentation around no deal that was recently found in a London pub – was described by the government as being outdated information written under the previous administration. Boris Johnson then suggested that it had been leaked by a former minister who, as part of the old regime, had access to the documents. Neither of these claims were true. It transpired that the information had been published in August, after Boris Johnson came to power. Not for the May regime. And therefore, logically, Cabinet ministers under May had no access to information produced in the future – so that was a lie too. And then Cummings summoned and sacked one of the Chancellor’s aides after searching her phone and concluding she had leaked the documents. So not a former ‘remainer’ minister, then.

(as a side note, the Brexit right paint anyone against no deal as a ‘remainer’, even when many of them voted for May’s deal to leave the EU while they voted against. Curiously, some of the media seem to go along with this misleading – propagandic, even – nomenclature.)

So the lie changed. Yes, it was undertaken by the Johnson government, old Michael Gove told us – but it included a lot of old information and assumptions by the quisling remainer May government that the triumphant, patriotic Ubermensch Johnson government does not agree with. You know the May government, the one that tried three times to take us out of the EU with a hard Brexit? Who talked for years about how great no deal would be? The one that Michael Gove was a Cabinet minister of? They’re part of the remainer establishment now. Keep up.

I talk about Yellowhammer not just because it’s interesting in itself – which it is – but because we should use it to inform our judgements around the Johnson government. Where previous governments misled, avoided, dodged – and yes, sometimes lied, I’m not that nostalgic – the Johnson administration’s first instinct is to lie.

So when they try to tell us with a straight face that they’ve suspended Parliament because we need a Queen’s Speech – don’t believe them. They’re doing it to dodge scrutiny, to avoid confrontation; they are, in essence, trying to get back to that golden August where, with MPs on holiday, proud Boris filled the airwaves unopposed with glorious propaganda about how we’re going to do a brilliant deal and if not we’re going to leave with no deal, which will be simultaneously equally and more brilliant – propaganda that disintegrated within hours of Parliament returning from recess.

He cuts rather a more shrinking figure now, doesn’t he?

I’m still not convinced that he’d take us out without a deal. No matter what the propaganda tell us, it won’t go well, and ultimately Johnson cares about one thing – himself and his place in history. Does he want to go down in history as Churchill, or May? I don’t think there’s a way for him to occupy the same place as his hero – Brexit has seen to that. Whatever the result is will frustrate half the electorate. But going down as a May is much easier, and much more likely – and the first way to do it is to undertake no deal.

So he’d rather be dead in a ditch than extend Article 50? He’s either going to have to resign or start digging that ditch.