Sigh.

None of the tweets below are true.

We could list a hundred more. In a torrent of something less than journalism, almost every news outlet in the country has issued kneejerk blaring headlines in the last 10 minutes claiming something that Theresa May categorically did NOT say.

In fact, as one or two slightly more diligent and professional reporters pointed out, what the Prime Minister actually did was studiously and doggedly AVOID the question of whether she would block a second referendum.

May simply repeated, over and over again, that “Now is not the time”. But nobody was proposing holding a referendum now. The earliest approximate date in the range suggested by Nicola Sturgeon was autumn 2018, over a year and a half away. That is not “now” in any remotely reasonable definition.

The First Minister expressly said that the vote should not be held until the details of Brexit were known. That will be the case well before Brexit actually happens. (Since the deal has to be ratified, which takes time. The EU’s chief negotiator said late last year that the “real” deadline for agreeing all the details is in fact October 2018, which is precisely in line with Nicola Sturgeon’s timeframe.)

On that matter she and the Prime Minister are in full agreement. The UK’s political journalists are at best incompetent idiots, and at worst deliberate liars.

And sadly that, like the tweets above, is not news.