Unless politicians mean what they say we get a world where nothing can be relied on and chaos rules. Trump's disdain for the truth is profoundly harmful in that case.

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Words matter.

They clearly matter to me because, well, words are what I produce, right now, from me, into this microphone, looking down that camera, to reach you to discuss an issue that I think is of importance. And that issue is that I believe that words really do have an impact upon the world.

You will recall, perhaps from your childhood - I certainly do - that there was that horrible phrase that said, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

It was stupid.

It was wrong.

It was utterly incorrect.

It showed a complete misunderstanding of human nature. Because words hurt very badly, very often. And we should be aware of that.

So why am I talking about this now? Well, I'm clearly talking about it in the context of our friend Donald Trump. I use the word friend loosely here, just to show how important words are.

And Donald Trump is saying things that Nigel Farage now says we shouldn't necessarily believe. He knows what he means, but we should interpret these things loosely because, well, he's Donald, isn't he? Rather like we used to say, ‘but he's Boris, isn't he?' of one of our former Prime Ministers, who turned out to be a complete idiot, and who was expelled from the House of Commons for not telling the truth.

And the truth matters. Because Donald Trump is either trying to deliberately mislead the world at present when he says things like Zelensky is a dictator in Ukraine when he clearly is not on the basis of absolutely straightforward factual observation, or he is simply lying.

But what he is definitely trying to do by making those claims is distort the reality that people understand about the world around them. And to me, that is a crime. That's a serious crime, because not telling the truth, deliberately distorting the truth, trying to gain an advantage by not telling the truth, it's akin to me, to fraud.

Fraud is the crime of securing an advantage by reason of a deception. And Donald Trump is committing a deception. And he's doing so to increase his electoral popularity and to advance his agenda in the USA. And therefore, my accusation that he is committing a crime is justified because there is no evidence that what he said is correct.

There's also no evidence that what Nigel Farage said is correct. After all, he said on the one hand, ‘I condemn what Trump says', and on the other hand, he says, well, he doesn't really mean what he says.

And therefore, he's not only hedging his bets, but he's also leaving us with doubt as to his meaning, and he's not alone.

Keir Starmer is at the present point in time planning for a visit to the USA about which Donald Trump has already said he does not know the purpose, because, as he put it, he's having the meeting because Keir Starmer asked for it, not because Donald Trump wanted it.

But Keir Starmer is preparing for that meeting by again using what I consider to be seriously duplicitous wordings. He and David Lammy, his foreign secretary, are both trying to keep Trump on side, whilst at the same time, phoning Zelensky in Ukraine to say, ‘No, we don't think you're a dictator.' whilst, at the same time, claiming the special relationship requires that they do get on with Trump.

I don't want Keir Starmer to get on with Trump.

I don't want David Lammy to get on with Marcus Rubio, or whoever it is who's the Secretary of State for Trump.

I don't trust those people. They do not tell the truth.

We cannot deal with people who lie with us. It is one of the most difficult things to deal with in life. When you realise that somebody who you thought you could trust is in fact a liar or has become a liar, you are completely disorientated as a consequence. It's happened to me in my life. I know how disabling it was.

And right now, that is what is happening in world political affairs. We expect the US president to tell the truth, or at least the truth as we would expect the US president to see it - which may not be something we necessarily agree with, but at least we understand the lens through which they're viewing the world, and therefore what we can expect from that perspective, and we therefore have a way of interpreting it.

But as it stands, we have a President who is not seeking to tell the truth.

He will make stuff up.

He will say it.

He will repeat it.

It is completely without foundation.

And in this sense, his only near rival in recent times has been Boris Johnson.

Again, I make that point. Boris Johnson did lose the confidence of his party. They literally decided in the end, by undertaking a mass resignation of ministers, as the only way in which to topple him, that he had to go. And go indeed he did, and he was eventually expelled from the House of Commons.

And the point is very simple. A liar cannot govern.

They can beat a country into submission, and that may be what Trump is trying to do. We don't know, but we all have to accept the possibility that he simply has given up on the democratic process in the USA, and will stay as he clearly intended to on 6th January 2021, whether he has an electoral mandate or not. But he can't govern on that basis, because at some point, people will have had enough of him.

If he stages a coup, there would have to be a coup to replace him in the end, because he literally will drive the people of the USA to a point of insanity, and he will drive the rest of the world to that point as well, because nobody will be able to trust a word he says.

Frankly, he's already reached that point.

Frankly, Elon Musk has already reached that point because very few people really believe what he says either.

And there is an enormous disquiet growing with these sycophants, with whom Trump is surrounding himself, who will say anything for the sake of it.

I noted his press secretary, joking as if it is a joke, that Canada is the 51st state of the USA. But it isn't. Canada. is an independent state, able to make up its own mind. The Press Secretary for the President of the USA can't present something that is not true and get away with it. They are creating misinformation, just as Trump is.

And this, therefore, is pernicious, because it's one thing for Trump to do this, but what he's doing is creating an environment where others feel free to do it as well.

What we know has ceased to be. What we know is now unknown, as far as they're concerned. And all we can do is fall back on wisdom. And wisdom is, for example in this case, represented by something that Maya Angelou, the amazing, great, black American writer once said, when she said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

And I think she was right. What she is saying in that phrase is, if somebody says something, trust that they mean it. They expose their deep inner meaning, their soul, if you like, as a consequence of what they say. And that is what Donald Trump is doing. He is telling us that he is reckless, a liar, indifferent to the truth, willing to be fraudulent, if you wish. And we should take him at his word. That is what Donald Trump is.

Now, the question is, what do we do about it? And there are two answers. One of the answers is that we tell the truth. I'm trying to do that right here, right now.

And the other one is that we search for what our meaning is. Here, I went back to look at a book by Viktor Frankl, who was a psychologist, who survived Auschwitz. He was in it, and he came out on the liberation. And he then wrote some amazing books about the meaning of life.

And what he understood as a consequence of that experience in Auschwitz was that when all else fails, the only thing left to us is to work out our inner meaning because nobody can take that away from us.

And this is where I think we have to be right now in the world. We have to work out what it is that in the face of this turmoil, this conflict, this dissembling, this deceit, this fraud, and everything else that is going on around us, what is it that we want? And my answer is that we want honesty, integrity, fairness, justice, well-being, the right of everybody to live well.

I believe that's what we want.

I believe that should be our meaning.

It's the exact opposite of where Trump is.

But my suggestion is, that this is a task that each of us can undertake individually. And if we do, in the face of this chaos, then we can come out with something better when it is all over. And indeed, more than that, by actually providing a counterforce to what Trump is doing with his lies and misinformation, we speed up the process of change towards that which is good.

Words matter.

I'm hoping that you've noticed what I've just said. I'm hoping they will make a difference for you. My goal is that we should use words to make a better world. And I believe that's possible.