Editorial Friday 25 November 2016: Top trolling, Team Brexit!

Just when you thought this week couldn't get any sillier, Team Brexit have smashed all records for sheer bare-faced political lying.

I'm not making this up, unfortunately: Change Britain stalwarts Michael Gove, Steve Baker and Gisela Stuart have demanded that Theresa May spend a £200 million a week "Brexit bonus" on the NHS.

It's total Schumachers, obviously, but at least it's down from the £350 million a week for the NHS bus suggestion. In a few years, they'll get down around the right level of Brexit bonus: £0 a week for the NHS.

This is in the face of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (bloody experts) pointing out that Brexit's hit on sterling's value has driven higher inflation and lower economic growth.

It is also in the face of political reality: the fact that all the funding that the EU give the UK right back will have to be replaced.

And rather deliciously, the OBR pointed this out in reply.

As the Duc De La Rouchefoucauld memorably observed, "hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue".

Another interesting revelation today is newly-released Cabinet papers from the early 1980s proving that Margaret Thatcher lied in her autobiography about her intention to abolish and privatise the welfare state.

It would seem that Norman Fowler saved the NHS on that occasion.