Our politics seem awash with hypocrisy, which leads us to suspect that honesty and integrity are increasingly rare qualities in public life.

But is hypocrisy really so bad? Given what it takes to get elected, and what we expect of politicians once in office, we may want to think again about political hypocrisy. Hypocrisy may not be an attractive human quality, but in politics, it is often a desirable one - and may sometimes be better than the alternative.