Now here they are in plain sight, a Government of liars and louts, sticking their fingers up to the people they claim to serve. What is worse, they know they will get away with it.

That was the most dispiriting thing about last week – the fact that nobody is going to be punished for dishonesty, contempt of Parliament and crude bullying.

We live in a country where such things are now rewarded at the highest level, which is bad news for those who still believe in truth and justice.

The Prime Minister knows that he misled the country about Iraq. Whether Saddam Hussein had the fabled WMD or not, he was never a threat to this country and was never likely to be, so the war was needless.

And it is a bit early to claim that we have given Iraq a golden future, as our Dear Leader does so often.

I have been to post-war Baghdad, which Anthony Blair and George W. Bush have not (the President bravely flew over it at 31,000ft) and I can tell them both that there is no sign yet of a happy ending.

As for ‘Doctor’ John Reid, with his baseless smears against the intelligence services, so embarrassing that even Downing Street could not bear to back him up, how did such a man ever become one of the Queen’s Ministers?

Like rather a lot of Anthony Blair’s henchmen and helpers, ‘Doctor’ Reid is an ex-Communist. What marks out members of that party is a willingness to use the crudest methods, without any shame, to crush opponents.

‘Doctor’ Reid may have given up his goal of a workers’ state, but has he abandoned the tactics he learned? You judge.

Then there is the grotesque oaf John Prescott, one day menacing Labour backbenchers and claiming laughably that ‘Tony doesn’t tell lies’, the next flashing V-signs in Downing Street like a lagered-up bootboy who has just been let off with a caution for the ninth time.

What a disgrace he is to Labour’s tradition of great working-class figures who respected the truth and never used a poor background as an excuse for bad manners or coarse behaviour.

But the worst of these three is the Prime Minister. He presents himself as a gentleman with perfect manners and is all smarm when we do what we are told.

But he unleashes these crude musclemen as soon as he is thwarted or threatened. In future he should appear in public with a leather jacket and tattooed knuckles. Then we would know what we were dealing with.