led up the garden path

I love being hoodwinked, led up the garden path, dazzled by red herrings and then awed into submission by an ingenious finale.

"We've been well and truly led up the garden path - especially by Boris Johnson, with how Brexit has worked out for Northern Ireland."

"But my view - and having talked to people who were involved in that process is - we weren't led up the garden path, there was genuinely progress made. "We came really close, but we've got to do it.

"It left victims and survivors wondering whether they had just been led up the garden path," Ms Thompson said.

But he is profoundly sceptical of their use as a kind of home-brewed alternative therapy: "What worries me is susceptible individuals who want to believe this kind of thing because they really have problems and need some kind of psychological help - that is where I get a little bit annoyed, because people can be led up the garden path by techniques that clearly are snake oil, and do not and will not provide any long term benefit for an underlying condition."