Falling asleep in front of Question Time the week before last I was jolted awake by a question I’d given up writing in my notebook. “Why,” a woman in the audience asked the panel of politicians and commentators, “do you lie all the time? Wouldn’t it be better if you just told us the truth?”

Reporting from Lancashire, Yorkshire and Teesside earlier in the campaign, I’d come across this plea and its close cousins many times over. “You can’t trust any of them.” “They’re all the same.” “They’re all in it for themselves.” “It doesn’t matter who you vote for, or if you vote at all, it doesn’t make any difference.” “I don’t believe a word they say.”

And so forth. On the road, vox-popping