In recent weeks we have been hearing blatant denials from Russia and Saudi Arabia about the state sponsored murders they have been accused of committing. The quality of the denials, despite evidence to the contrary, is what is so striking. Individual nations have in times past been responsible for the murder of dissidents on foreign soil, but rarely have we witnessed such blatant disregard for public opinion. In fact, the murder of Sergai Skripal was surely designed for maximum publicity to maximise terror.

When leaders blatantly lie it is a serious abuse. We are born depending on love and family for our survival. We need to be cared for and we need to trust those who are responsible for us and our wellbeing. When this trust is broken, children will suffer. People have often needed the care of their community for their very survival in times of crisis and hardship. When we hunted in groups, we needed to trust the integrity of our fellow hunters. We teach children that lying is wrong and being seen as untrustworthy is bad. We do need to be able to trust each other more than we distrust, if we are to live positive lives.

I think about the damage done to our politics by our Brexit referendum campaign - whether we voted to Remain or Leave - and what will be the long-term consequences for the political life in this country. People worry about demanding another referendum on the Brexit deal because the people who voted Leave will not trust the political process again. That is possible, but we can also consider the loss of trust that has taken place because of the many conscious falsehoods people were fed. Michael Gove, a government minister told us not to trust the ‘experts’ who did not agree with his views. Experts can be wrong of course, but it is a rare expert who deliberately lies.

Loss of trust in expertise will put our very survival at risk. Global warning is now virtually unanimously accepted as a danger to humanity and our way of life. It is a reality and we always deny reality our peril. We have been given only twelve years to make major changes to the way we live and the use of our resources. President Trump now says the climate might be changing but the causes are not necessarily ‘man-made.’ He says that the climate experts have a ‘political’ agenda. Indeed they have. Their agenda is to save the planet. However, in the world of Donald Trump, lying and politics seem to have become one and the same thing and this is very dangerous.

We lie at our peril. We damage our relationships and a sense of trust in the world. Being lied to is one of the most distressing of human experiences. When faced with a partner’s infidelity or a trusted friend’s betrayal, people will say it was the lying that hurt the most. People who lie easily cause immense hurt because our instinctive sense of trust is damaged and we feel foolish at having trusted them in the first place. We need to know what is true and untrue to make considered decisions and good decisions are always based on reality.

People who believed what they were told in the Brexit referendum don’t deserve mockery. They need sympathy because their trust was abused and that is serious. At some point if politics is to recover our respect, then the public figures who lie and distort reality will need either to apologise to us all or be held to account.