Political column – February 5

There are three reasons why this issue is more serious than parties in Downing Street.

Reason One: We all might die.

Reason Two: See reason one.

Reason Three: See reason two.

The United States has refused the Russian demand that the Ukraine will not become a member of Nato.

If the Ukraine does become a member of Nato, or Nato guarantees its security in the same way Britain and France guaranteed the security of Poland in 1939, it will mean that any attack on the Ukraine will, under the Nato doctrine of mutual defence, be seen as an attack on all Nato member states.

Which creates the conditions for the triggering of World War Three, with the difference over conflicts One and Two that this time it will involve the world's biggest nuclear-armed powers.

So one of the most dangerous aspects of Partygate is that our politicians (and media) are obsessed with it to the extent that at the last PMQs I watched not a single MP asked about or even mentioned this explosive crisis in eastern Europe.

Had Putin invaded that night future historians would have judged that to be an extraordinary and shameful state of affairs, and wondered whether our current Parliament was packed with trivial non entities without a single statesman or stateswoman between them to keep an eye on critical events on the world stage.

All this is being overshadowed by the promotion of the "trust me – I'm a politician" sales gimmick, which is enough to send chills down the spine when you consider that politics is a profession which involves politicians being expected to bury their consciences to pretend to believe in policies they may actually strongly disagree with, in the interests of collective Cabinet responsibility or party unity (if they are open and honest about their disagreements, they are "rebels").

And you can trust me on that – I'm a journalist.

There again there is trust and trust, and lies and lies, and the concept that Boris Johnson is a serial liar has now become so embedded that nobody believes anything he says.

His claim that when Sir Keir Starmer was Director of Public Prosecutions he failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile has been ripped apart by opponents (a lot of whom are on the Tory benches, as it happens, as one of Johnson's grave weaknesses is that he lacks a Parliamentary "tribe"), and has come under the microscope by the BBC "reality check" department which has delivered a coruscating adverse judgment.

You can call it a smear and a slur, as the BBC factcheckers ruled that Sir Keir was not party to any of the decision-making over Savile. In that case, to imply Sir Keir was responsible for Savile getting away with it was a ludicrous, unfair, and unjustified accusation.

But in their routine abuse of each other, politicians (whom we all trust) have a slithery way of getting round that, don't they, if they choose the correct political jargon for such occasions.

Sir Keir had no involvement? Ah, but it "happened on his watch." He knew nothing about it? Then he was "missing in action" and/or "sleeping at the wheel."

I have done my own reality check using a well known search engine and the search terms "was Jimmy Savile ever prosecuted?"

It turns out that actually nobody at all prosecuted Jimmy Savile. In fact the list of people who did not prosecute Jimmy Savile is almost infinite.

The Pope, the Queen, that bloke down the chip shop, Red Rum, PC Plod, Tin Tin, Rasputin, the Kray twins, and many, many others.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the raising of the energy price cap, I was curious to learn what the Green Party thinks about it. In other words, should it be abhorred, as hitting hard-working families in the pocket and leaving them shivering in their own homes, or should it be applauded, as a green-friendly step along the path of discouraging our dependence on planet-destroying fossil fuels?

In her response, the Green MP Caroline Lucas looks at the issue strategically: “The solution lies not in a rapid U-turn to the fossil fuel era as demanded by some Tory MPs but in rapidly speeding up the transition to renewable energy so we address the climate emergency and make ourselves less vulnerable to global price rises."