I don't believe it

As the Major government was drawing to its close, Cecil Parkinson appeared on Question Time. He cited a statistic as showing the government's good economic performance and drew jeers from the audience. "But it's true!", he protested, missing the point. You could almost feel through the screen the audience's refusal to believe anything the government was going to tell them.

Governments come into office with a certain amount of credibility, which they then proceed to draw on to bamboozle their electors. What they don't seem to understand is that it is extremely hard to top this store up again, except through a period in opposition. Every time Gordon Brown claims that "inflation" is running at about 2% a year, people will shake their heads as they think of their supermarket bills and their energy bills, not to mention their council tax bills.

Government can never admit it's wrong. So home information packs are an aid to faster property sales, the nationalised health service and state education are improving by leaps and bounds, the army gets the equipment it needs, people are abandoning their 4x4's and walking instead, crime is falling, sentencing is proportionate, energy policy is under our control, making unwilling children stay at school until they are 18 is progressive, your personal data is safe in our hands and any isolated accidents aren't a government failure, the Olympics will be splendid value for money, state spending isn't generally wasteful, and we're wriggling out of a referendum on the EU constitution.

And off they spin into their parallel universe, followed only by a few political groupies.

They can't even convince the increasing population of polar bears that we all need to act to prevent global warming. What then about the hundreds of thousands lately stranded in China by unseasonal snow? And British polls have consistently shown that the public doesn't buy the claim that man made global warming is endangering the planet, despite the best efforts of politicians of all hues, and environment correspondents across the media, including the BBC. Unaccountably the British public considers it a tax-raising ruse, though the truth is more sinister. When Mr Miliband combines two wrongs to claim that the new role of the European Union should be to fight global warming, he probably believes it! But out here we don't.

Back in the Commons, the media are starting to look more closely at the numbers with which McStalin spatters PMQs. The Spectator's Coffee House blog regularly picks up examples of claims which he can only have taken from a dodgy dossier. The Opposition have yet to get to grips with this - not even his most fanatical supporters could claim Mr Cameron as a policy wonk with a feast of figures at his fingertips.

Meanwhile the rest of us will continue to sigh as we get these broadcasts from the parallel universe - indignation long past, saying with a resigned sigh, "I don't believe it".

Just as Cecil's audience didn't.