The only 'wedge' being driven by Boris Johnson and his supporters is between truth and lies

On everything from rail strikes to Rwanda, the government's entire political agenda is based on convincing the public to believe deliberate lies.

The Transport Secretary Grant Shapps was on the BBC this morning talking about the upcoming rail strikes. Interviewed by Sophie Raworth, Shapps claimed that "we discover today... that behind the scenes Keir Starmer has been encouraging the unions to go on strike."

This is a lie. There is zero evidence, and certainly none that has emerged today, that the Labour leader is “encouraging the unions to go on strike” or anything akin to that.

Shapps’ claim appears to be very loosely based on a misleading front page story in the Mail on Sunday, headlined “Starmer Does Support the Rail Strikers”.

The Mail story is based on leaked minutes from Labour’s National Executive Committee which suggest that the Labour leader “said it was wrong for the Government to restrict the right to strike’.

This is not any great revelation. It is longstanding Labour policy to oppose new laws banning strikes and this is not in any way news.

However, despite this fact, Shapps false claim went entirely unchallenged by the BBC, leaving millions of viewers under the false impression that the Labour leader is somehow “encouraging” unions to go on strike.

In any well-functioning democratic country, the fact that a senior minister was able to spread a deliberate lie about the opposition leader on national television would at the very least trigger some outrage, or debate.

Yet not here, and certainly not this week.