WHO didn’t enjoy Conservative Party chairman James Cleverly on Newsnight on Tuesday being ripped a new orifice by Emily Maitlis?

The reason it made great TV was the magnitude of Cleverly’s excuse. Having listened to the presenter’s scoop that the Conservative Party Campaign HQ’s Twitter account had been altered to look like a fact-checking service. Cleverly squirmed, then claimed it had been done only because Labour had lied – by claiming American business is about to take over control of our NHS.

So he seems to have lied about why the Tories were lying by referencing lies.

But will Cleverly be held to account further for his account of the con, which Maitlis described as “dystopian” and “trying to coat propaganda as hardened fact”?

Not a chance. That’s because our society accepts excuses and lies. Saturation in excuse after excuse has resulted in normalcy, standard practice.

Sad as it seems, Boris Johnson is set to become Prime Minister despite accusations of granting public funding to a self-proclaimed tech businesswoman, a former model who admits she encouraged Johnson to pole dance with him.

Johnson claimed the reason he visited her flat several times was to “discuss technology.” Do we believe it? Personally, no. But we do accept it.

This week we’ve seen former helicopter pilot Prince Andrew crash land into a field of attack dogs, again with Maitlis shooting him down, as he came up with excuse after excuse as to why the public should still love him, despite his very close association with a convicted paedophile, and despite being photographed with a woman who claims to have been trafficked in the direction of the Prince.

The pampered Prince – who once sold his Sunningdale house at £3m over the asking price to a Kazakh oligarch he met while working as a global trade ambassador – at one point offered the absurd excuse he couldn’t have been at the scene of the meeting with the alleged victim in London because he was in a Woking branch of Pizza Express that same night.

But he’d clearly forgotten he’d previously said his daughter’s pizza party began at 4pm. The meeting with his accuser, it was claimed, took place many hours later, plenty of time to take his Daimler and police protection team in the direction of Tramp.

Prince Andrew’s excuses ran off the scale. “I don’t sweat,” he maintained. (He’s certainly sweating now.) But will he be indicted by the FBI, or taken to France for questioning? Don’t hold your breath. And the Queen has declared support for her second son, signalling all will be forgiven and forgotten.

Yet, in a sense the era of the uber-excuse is understandable. The notion of mea culpa is all but gone. And it’s because nowadays, many of the nation’s 16m Twitter users are waiting at the ready to wreck a life.

There was a time when a politician’s hour of judgement, for example, came about during an interrogation with Robin Day. Now everyone is a potential attack dog. You’ve got Gary Lineker kicking out whoever he chooses – or the suddenly shrill Lorraine Kelly leaping onto the bandwagon of selected opprobrium by taking Johnson’s publicity seeking pole-dancing pal to task, clearly trying to copy Piers Morgan’s voice and a few headlines.

Those who attempt to answer difficult questions with reasonable excuses can end up lambasted. Film director Ridley Scott once declared “Non-white stars aren’t bankable,” when accused of making his Egypt look very white in Exodus: Gods and Kings, arguing he wouldn’t get Hollywood backing for a lead actor named Mohammed. And he was condemned for explaining what had happened.

Justin Trudeau was pilloried as a racist. But his reply that he was much younger in 2001 and now was hugely apologetic - “I’m pissed off at myself. I’m disappointed in myself” - didn’t wash away the stains of disdain left by the “brownface” accusations.

Sian Lloyd was also lambasted, unfairly, because she made a stupid, crass comment about traffic jams being like holocausts, but it didn’t make her anti-Semitic, as claimed. She tried to argue she is in fact half Jewish and used the small ‘h’ but her excuses were ignored.

There’s little doubt that Boris Johnson or Prince Andrew are more likely to re-train for the priesthood than come clean about any crimes they may, or may not, have committed. There’s also no doubt we’re all sick of being assumed to be as stupid as this pair think we are.

But in some cases, because of today’s climate of judgement, we need to allow an excuse to be seen as an honest reason.