ITV EU Debate: Into the spin room they came, the buckets of b******t under each arm

Welcome to the Spin Room, where the lies fly so hard and so fast you might not stay on your feet

(L-R) Nicola Sturgeon, Angela Eagle, Amber Rudd, Julie Etchingham, Andrea Leadsom, Gisela Stuart and Boris Johnson prepare to do battle in the ITV Referendum Debate (Matt Frost/ITV via Getty Images)

The clock struck 10. Julie Etchingham said her goodbyes, the doors swung open and in to the ‘spin room’ they came, great big buckets of bullshit in each hand.

Spin is a word you hear a lot in politics. Some people will tell you its meaning is unclear. It’s not. It just means bullshit. The job of the spinner is to throw it at journalists with such force that, unless it lands a direct hit on the target’s axis of rotational symmetry, it will cause them literally to spin, becoming so dizzy that they will forget what they have just seen and heard with their own eyes and ears and simply repeat the bullshit they are now physically stained with.

It’s a bit like Men in Black, only the suits are all crap, no one has even half an ounce of cool and rather than that memory-erasing flashbulb thing, they’ve just got a series of angrily repeated lies.

In Iain Duncan Smith, calling it a “slam dunk for leave.”

In came Liz Truss: “What is clear is that the Leave side don’t have any arguments.”

In came Priti Patel, doing her very best to remember what she'd just been told to say.

These are the people, don’t forget, who have entrusted us all - and against our will - to make a decision of immense complexity and bewildering importance of which the consequences cannot possibly be known, and have equipped us to do it by placing us in the centre of a great blizzard of bullshit. And yet we cannot, of course, be capable of watching TV for a couple of hours and remembering what it is we’ve just seen.

If anyone did watch for the full two hours, what they were treated to was an extended game of Liars’ Swingball. There is not an original thought left in anyone’s head. There are no new points to be made. No new arguments. No new rebuttals. The heat is rising and the light is going out.

“You’re going to hear a lot of nonsense from the leave campaign,” said Angela Eagle in her opening remarks, and in her next breath claimed that the Conservatives want to curtail paid holiday. Does anyone believe the Conservatives actually want to do that?

David Cameron wanted to avoid televised ‘blue on blue’ attacks throughout this campaign. It didn’t happen. “The only number Boris Johnson is interested in is Number 10,” Amber Rudd said at the start, to whoops of delight from the audience. In her closing she said, “Boris is the life and soul of the party but you wouldn’t want him driving you home at the end of the night.” Pre-planned, pre-scripted, these. Had the Prime Minister sanctioned this? Approved it? Requested it?

“I’m in politics. Amber is in politics. Boris is in politics,” said Liz Truss. So that’s clear.

Three times, the Remain side attacked Boris for wanting to be PM. It’s hardly an unreasonable ambition of an elected politician. Though the charge, of course, is that he doesn’t believe what he is saying.

The usual attack lines were there from him: “Do you want to be ruled by an unelected elite?” he asked, certain in the knowledge that, if he wins this referendum, that is precisely what he will become.

For a man who, by his own admission, ummed and arred and agonised for weeks if not months, quite possibly years, about what side he would come down on in this referendum, there is much to laugh about in his utter certainty now.

“Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold,” wrote Yeats at the end of the world. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

The very worst, you might argue, go from one to the other.

And there, of course, was Nicola Sturgeon. As sharp and articulate as ever, speaking up for the "rights of people all across the UK." The UK, of course, being the union that her entire life's work is dedicated to breaking. Not so much Brexit as Bruck-up.

Back and forth the same old points went. The economy here, migration there. What we need is 'Filipino nurses and 'Indian anaesthetists' said Boris, as if their kids don't take up the same school places as Polish plumbers.

To win this referendum, someone surely, has to change someone else’s mind? But surely no one can be made to listen to this stuff for long enough for that to happen?

If, for any reason, you want my advice, just make up your mind now, and stick with it. It is only going to get worse.