Only a truly skilful liar could lie as badly as Boris Johnson and get away with it

To say the prime minister needs to brush up on the art of deception misses the point. He distorts the truth like Les Dawson used to play the piano

Few men in the f*** business community can boast the kind of experience and expertise as Boris Johnson can, but the technical challenges posed by the positions he would find himself having to maintain on Monday morning were a struggle, even for him.

When you’re trying to convince a room full of business people that, hey ho, you didn’t really mean it when you said “f*** business” 18 months ago, the one thing you could really do without is your friend and former f*** business partner turning up on live television, demanding to know why you haven’t returned her calls.

A real predicament, this one. On the one hand, Johnson knows that the ongoing City Hall investigation that his potential misconduct while he was mayor of London will turn on is whether there was anything unusual about his relationship with the businesswoman and entrepreneur Jennifer Arcuri, which he failed to declare on the roughly nine separate occasions on which he should have done so.

So it’s very, very important Johnson somehow manages to style out the very obvious lie that Arcuri was a business associate and nothing more.

And then, on the other, while you’re there trying to style out another very obvious lie, that you are the true champion of business, you must also pretend that this very angry and very upset woman is angry and upset with you entirely for business reasons.

So did he get away with it? Essentially, yes. Because Johnson is a very special, perhaps even unique kind of liar. He’s terrible at it, but that is his great talent. Johnson lies like Les Dawson used to play the piano. You have to be an excellent liar to lie this badly.

Many people can lie. Many people can lie very convincingly. But few, if any, can stand in front of a room full of people and say things that he and everyone present without exception knows to be blatantly untrue.

He will lie when it is so terrifyingly obvious that others would not dare.

And that, two weeks in, is the emergent and clear story of this election campaign. Johnson has a short stump speech; he’s given it at least a dozen times now. About getting Brexit done, about unleashing this country’s potential, about Jeremy Corbyn’s two referendums, about parliament blocking Brexit, about Corbyn wanting to stay in the EU at a cost of “£1bn a month” – the exact same cost attached to his own transition period.

And it is, all of it, every word, as I have explained several times before, lies. Either blatant lies or false choices or straw men or debating points that bear no relation whatsoever to the truth.

It is less than four weeks until the election, and potentially less than four weeks until it is confirmed that you really can win a general election, in the United Kingdom, in 2019, by lying and lying and lying and lying and lying without stopping.

You can lie to the Confederation of British Industry, you can lie in factories, you can lie in TV debates and in set-piece speeches outside No 10, you can lie until you hope that neither you nor anyone else can even remember what the truth once was.

Nothing on this scale and of this nature has ever been attempted in British politics before. If it succeeds, it is hard to see how the country can ever be the same again.