MANY people will have been scratching their heads over the past couple of days wondering what all that fuss in the Commons was about.
The Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, upset SNP and Conservative MPs by accepting a Labour amendment on an SNP vote calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle says he let through a Labour amendment on an SNP motion for a Gaza ceasefire as he feared violence to parliamentarians if he did notPixel8000
I know, there are few things more dull than procedures of the House of Commons.
What on Earth is an “opposition day motion” anyway, millions will quite reasonably be asking, and what difference does it make to anyone what the SNP thinks about the war in Gaza?
They would be better spending their time trying to run Scotland’s schools and hospitals a little less incompetently.
Yet one thing does matter — what Hoyle gave as his reason for breaking convention and accepting a Labour amendment on an SNP motion.
Panic buttons
He says he did it because he was worried that some MPs might be physically attacked on the streets if he did not.
While refusing to give details, he hinted that MPs on all sides of the House have received threats against them on the issue of Gaza, and that he chose the motion because he had a “duty of care” towards MPs.
I am sure he is not exaggerating about the threats.
It was only a few weeks ago that the North London constituency office of Conservative MP Mike Freer was firebombed.
Freer, who is not Jewish but has often spoken in defence of Israel, has recently announced he will retire from politics at the next election.
It was his second narrow escape.
His office had previously been visited by Islamist extremist Harbi Ali, but he had been out at the time.
Ali went on to murder Conservative MP David Amess at a constituency surgery in Essex in 2021.
And before that, of course, Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered by a right-wing extremist in her Yorkshire constituency, while Labour MP Stephen Timms nearly died after being stabbed by an Islamist in his East London seat.
Politics always has excited passions and always will, but how alarming that extremists seem now to be able to dictate what is and what is not debated in the House of Commons by physically threatening MPs.
It is intolerable that our elected representatives have to work under the threat of violence.
Clearly, we need tighter security for Members of Parliament.
A liberal democracy functions through open and robust debate
Ross Clark
Much as I was shocked by the stories of MPs frittering away our money on duck houses and the like, I would never resent money being spent on protecting people in public life from physical attack.
If they feel they need panic buttons, stab vests or police to accompany them to constituency events, then so be it.
But what we absolutely must not do is what Lindsay Hoyle did yesterday evening and allow the mob to dictate what can and can not be debated in Parliament.
A liberal democracy functions through open and robust debate.
If that is lost and MPs find themselves — even involuntarily — adjusting what they say or how they vote in response to the threat of physical attack, then we will no longer be a democracy.
We will have a political system in which terrorists have won and are now effectively in charge.
The Gaza conflict has certainly upped the level of threats against MPs.
Just two weeks ago a mob gathered outside the home of Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, demanding that he call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza.
The Gaza conflict has certainly upped the level of threats to MPsAFP via Getty
Come on, protest outside Parliament if you want, but not outside MPs’ homes.
But it is important to remember there is nothing new about a physical threat to MPs.
During the Northern Irish Troubles, three Conservative MPs — Airey Neave, Sir Anthony Berry and Ian Gow — were murdered by the IRA.
Four other people were killed in the Brighton bombing that killed Berry, and it is thanks only to luck that then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was not also killed.
Simple lesson
Thatcher’s response to that event was admirable.
Undaunted, she appeared on the podium at the Conservative Party Conference a few hours later with hardly a hair out of place and declared “democracy will prevail”.
To his credit, Ellwood, too, was undeterred by the mob outside his home, saying the incident merely strengthened his resolve to stand up for what he believed in.
If we are going to save democracy from the mob, that needs to be the default position of all MPs, not least the Speaker of the House of Commons.
Yesterday, Hoyle got it badly wrong, with the result that he may very well find himself dragged away from his chair less ceremoniously than — in accordance with a long-held Parliamentary tradition — he was dragged towards it.
Parliamentary procedure can be pretty arcane at the best of times, but in the case of yesterday’s events there is a very simple lesson to come out of it.
We must never, ever allow mobs or terrorists to lay down the terms of political debate.
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