Facebook has announced that it will allow UK election candidates to run false ads in the run-up to this December’s general election, causing consternation amongst the public at large.

‘Democracy cannot function in the face of lies – affairs of state in this country have always been founded in politicians telling the truth,’ said Tony Blair, without the merest hint of irony, and despite the fact that nobody had even asked him.

At a press conference earlier today, Facebook communications spokesbod Liza Plenty addressed this seemingly controversial decision.

‘We can see that this might be a contentious decision,’ she said, ‘but in order to be impartial we are obliged to allow an equal balance of political perspectives to be broadcast across our bandwidth, and the simple truth is that most political adverts will feature speeches given by party leaders. Just think about that for a moment: if we don’t allow lies to be propagated across our platform then people would be unable to post a single word that either Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage had said.

‘Facebook is and always has been all about its users and were are committed to remaining open to all streams of income…’ She shuffled her notes hastily. ‘I’m sorry, that was a typo – to all streams of information.

‘Anyway, why are you picking on us all the time? Trump posts his every water-closet thought across Twitter, and you can tell from the content of those precisely where else his fingers have just been.’