The Labour MP Dawn Butler remembers the first time she was called a liar. She was eight years old and had just returned from a family holiday to Jamaica. She was telling her class that she saw a cockroach that could fly when the teacher stopped her and said she was lying. Butler was told to leave the classroom. She ran out of the school and went straight home.
It wouldn’t be the last time. When, in 2019, she recalled a racist incident she had experienced in parliament – she said she had been confused for a cleaner because she was Black – the Liberal Democrat staffer Steve Wilson tweeted it was “just not true” and that she should stop “propagating” such stories. (Wilson later apologised.)
