It’s generally not hard to read a politician. You instinctively know when they are being sincere and when they are bullshitting. When push comes to shove, they just aren’t as smart as they would like us to believe they are. They are inherently bad actors. The only people they ever fool are themselves. You know the form. We could all tell when Boris Johnson was lying. It was whenever his lips moved.
But there are the odd moments when they are impossible to read. When no one can really be sure what is going on. Are they playing a sophisticated triple bluff? Or have they entered a parallel universe where they are so detached from reality that even they have no idea what they are doing? Wednesday’s prime minister’s questions was a case in point. One for the connoisseur of madness.
