ON Friday I found myself on a guided tour of the Houses of Parliament, with visitors from Iceland, Georgia, Italy, Russia and the Czech republic with my son, a schoolfriend of his and me as the token English participants. Even an old cynic like me was unable to disguise his pride in the ‘mother of all parliaments’ – the oldest in the world. (If you haven’t been, you should. As a UK citizen, you can arrange a free tour by contacting your local MP - John Glen).

We learned about heritage (the houses of parliament are the most resplendent example of Victorian High Gothic design and architecture), the history of the English monarchy, many of whom have left their mark on our democracy and traditions, the history of parliamentary democracy in this country (we stood above the place where Guy Fawkes was discovered and later admired statues of Atlee, Churchill and Thatcher), the pageantry with a walk through the State Opening of Parliament, and discovered how legislation is enacted - a mixture of quaint tradition and modern expertise. We stood at the famous despatch box and saw the woolsack (but weren’t allowed to sit on it).

There was a messiness about the tour, reflective of the messiness of parliament itself – that mixture of architecture, history, pageantry and tradition which is home to the living embodiment of our democracy. Afterwards, we chatted about our experience and two things struck me.

First, that we take lightly at our peril the hard fought battles that brought us democracy and the constant vigilance needed to maintain it (something that we in Salisbury with our cherished Magna Carta know only too well).

An exhibition on the suffrage movement marking the anniversary of women being granted the vote, brought home how recently some of those famous battles were fought. And they continue today on the new battlegrounds of Social Media and Fake News, where those who seek to foment division and obfuscate reality spread lies and sow prejudice in their attempts to undermine democracy by denying the electorate access to the dispassionate truth on which it depends.

The chilling picture of the leader of the world’s largest democracy telling its citizens to mistrust what they read, and subsequently banning a journalist from a press conference because he didn’t like the question that was being asked, is a chilling reminder of how quickly totalitarianism can creep upon us.

Closer to home both sides of the Brexit debate stand accused of subverting the truth - one by perpetuating lies about an imaginary dividend, the other peddling and promoting doom-laden predictions of the armageddon that awaits us. Neither side will convince the other. Both feed the predilections of their supporters. Both do us an immense disservice. Democracy is under attack today far more effectively than Guy Fawkes could ever have imagined.