I’VE only been to the House of Commons once. It was to interview Alex Salmond. It’s a very strange place which radiates almost identical amounts of power and dysfunctionality. This week saw the power of tradition overcome any sense of decency or truth as the Labour MP Dawn Butler was thrown out of the chamber for failing to withdraw her accusations that the Prime Minister is a liar.

She was very specific. She said: “Poor people in our country have paid with their lives ­because the Prime Minister has spent the last 18 months misleading this House and the country over and over again.”

She highlighted disputed claims made by the Prime Minister, including that the link between Covid-19 infection and serious disease and death had been severed.

She added: “It’s dangerous to lie in a ­pandemic.”

“I am disappointed the Prime Minister has not come to the House to correct the record and correct the fact that he has lied to the House and the country over and over again.”

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“At the end of the day the Prime Minister has lied to this House time and time again.

“It’s funny that we get in trouble in this place for calling out the lie rather than the person ­lying.”

Again and again she was asked to withdraw her remarks which she steadfastly refused to do.

The silence from the Labour front-bench was as deafening as the chorus of support for her that echoed around social media. It was like a dam had burst. Here was someone actually calling out the Prime Minister for his actions, someone actually taking responsibility, doing their duty.

We live in a country where calling someone a liar is considered worse than lying; where calling out a racist is worse than being a racist. We live in a country where “our” parliament is so full of arcane procedures it is more like an 18th century Gentleman’s Club than a functioning seat of democracy. We live in a country where shameless corruption, greed, lying, and cheating are all fine, as long as it’s done by an Etonian buffon.

If Dawn Butler was taking some responsibility, others this week were not.

Jacob Rees-Mogg has since apologised ­“profusely” after he used an “extremely ­offensive racist term” in the House of ­Commons. The Commons Leader used the phrase ­“Yellow ­Peril” to refer to the Liberal Democrats in ­response to a question from an MP. The term is considered a racist reference to a so-called threat from East Asian people to the West. Rees-Mogg claimed he did not know that what he had said that was racist – and added his use of the term was “out of ignorance”.

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No-one believed him.

It’s all a big game to these people.

Just as it was in 2013 when Rees-Mogg was the guest-of-honour at the Traditional Britain Group’s Annual Dinner on Friday May 17 2013, held at London’s prestigious East India Club.

The group has its origins in the Western Goals Institute set up by General Sir ­Walter Walker – who was intimately involved in ­various plots of a military coup to bring down the Labour ­government of Harold Wilson in the mid-1970s – and the Tory Monday Club.

Traditional Britain founder Lord Sudeley praised Hitler, at a Monday Club meeting in 2006, for getting “everyone back to work” and stated that “the fact may be that some races are superior to others”.

Among its aims is support for the “time-honoured hereditary principle and our ­monarchy,” opposition to “communism, to socialism, to ­libertarianism, to anarchism” and support for “humane and voluntary state-assisted ­resettlement” of ethnic minority Britons.

Mogg later claimed “he didn’t know who the group were”.

No-one believed him.

THE ridiculous Rees-Mogg – reputed to have inherited between £100 and £150 million is the best paid MP in Westminster, earning, according to

the Spectator, at least £216,000 a year on top of an undisclosed, income from his 15% share in Somerset Capital Management (SCM).

Rees-Mogg is a member of the Cornerstone Group in the Tory Party, whose motto is Faith, Flag and Family, and flaunts his ­patriotic ­Christianity, which includes opposition to ­abortion and homosexuality. He is a bitter ­opponent of social welfare, insisting that the state should be reduced to the barest minimum.

And so we have the scenes of a white multi millionaire lying to the house about his own racism on the same day a black woman MP

is ­penalised for the “insult” of calling a liar a liar.

In this bizarre world Emily Maitlis is ­accused of breaking “impartiality”. Maitlis has said the BBC was wrong to find her guilty of breaching “impartiality” rules and ­accused the broadcaster of caving in to political pressure from Downing Street, in an interview with Press Gazette.

The Newsnight presenter angered BBC bosses after saying that viewers were on her side and she would not let the current affairs show ­become a “public announcement tannoy” for ministers. She compared the speed at which complaints against her were pursued internally, “after a call from Number 10”, to the 25 years it took for the BBC to expose Martin Bashir’s deceptions.

ALL of which might be considered milquetoast, just the routine now-normal exertion of state power. But in the context of the proposed changes to the Official Secrets Act these shifts are more chilling.

Under the proposals journalists could be treated like spies for reporting on matters of public interest under planned reforms to the UK’s Official Secrets Act.

The move has caused alarm at a time when press freedom is seen as being under attack in the UK following the raid by the Information Commissioner to find source of The Sun’s Matt Hancock source. Last week, it was revealed that foreign governments are targeting UK ­journalists with mobile phone spyware.

The Government said the reform was ­needed as the existing acts, with the last update in 1989, are no longer enough to fight the ­“discernible and very real threat posed by state threats”.

The Home Office consultation (which closed on Thursday) suggests journalists should be treated in the same way as those who leak ­information and those committing espionage offences.

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It also looked at whether maximum sentences should be increased from two to 14 years.

The Home Office said it does “not consider that there is necessarily a distinction in severity between espionage and the most serious unauthorised disclosures, in the same way that there was in 1989”.

“Although there are differences in the ­mechanics of and motivations behind espionage and unauthorised disclosure offences, there are cases where an unauthorised disclosure may be as or more serious, in terms of intent and/or damage,” it said.

In other words journalism – and whistleblowing is being criminalised.

Journalists have a duty to find out the truth. This is essential in any democracy which also only functions if public servants – such as ­politicians – have a sense of duty and if standards in public office are maintained. In ­Johnson’s ­Britain they are circling the sewer.