Dawn Butler has received messages of support from Conservative MPs after she was kicked out of the House of Commons for calling Boris Johnson a liar.
Speaking to indy100, the Labour MP said she had been endorsed by people on “all sides of the house” who were concerned about Johnson’s behaviour, and confirmed that this included Conservative Party MPs.
She declined to give specific names of those who had contacted her.
“They are concerned about the authoritarian powers that this government has and the direction of travel of our freedoms and our rights,” she said.
Follow the rules
Reflecting on the House of Commons dispute on Thursday, she said:
“It’s really important for everybody who has been following the rules, for all the families who have lost loved ones, that we call out the fact that our Prime Minister has consistently lied to the country and to parliament.
“I know what the rules are – I knew that if I called the Prime Minister a liar then it is considered unparliamentary language and I would be thrown out of Parliament.”
But she restated that she believed it to be wrong to be punished more for “calling out” the act of lying as opposed to the “lying” and said that Parliament should re-examine its rules to “suit the modern era.”
Eroding democracy
“This is eroding democracy and the right to hold the Prime Minister and his ministers to account”, she said.
“We have to be very careful that we don’t blindly walk into an authoritarian state where there’s just a few elite people at the very top making all the decisions and the rest of us are just bystanders”.
She added she believes Johnson lies to “make his party look good” and pointed to the NHS track and trace app and government investment in the NHS as two examples the PM “lies” about.
She also said she didn’t plan for the action to go viral but that it had made her “hopeful” that people would “look into all of [Johnson’s] lies”. “I’m just pleased that people are… doing their research and coming to the conclusions that Boris Johnson is indeed a liar.”
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