Hearing that Dawn Butler MP had been pulled over by the Metropolitan police, I briefly hoped the taxpayer might get back the whirlpool bath she charged us on her parliamentary expenses. But the officers skipped the boot and went straight to the passenger side, where they found the member for Brent Central recording them with her phone and looking pleased as punch to audition as the new Rosa Parks.
As it happens, the footage she released showed the police being deeply polite, and they subsequently explained that the pull-over had been due to a registration-plate mix-up. But Butler claimed it was a case of the dreaded ‘stop-and-search’ and within hours she was on Channel 4 News, being grilled by one of their crack interviewers.
Fatima Manji asked Butler how such a thing could happen to someone who a day earlier had been ‘declared one of the 25 most inspirational women in Britain’ by Vogue magazine.
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