ON the television news they sometimes report punch-ups in foreign parliaments – distant places such as Thailand and the Ukraine.
It makes for terrific viewing, legislators whacking each other, biting, kicking and generally behaving worse than Tyson Fury in a mood.
We laugh at such scenes, don’t we? We think ourselves superior, reckoning such mayhem could never occur in our House of Commons because, my dears, we’re British. We drink tea. We are far too civilised for such fisticuffs.
After Tuesday’s extraordinary events at Westminster, when anger nearly boiled out of control, don’t count on it.
Commons Speaker John Bercow, blatant as a bad shoplifter, bent the rules to help his mates who are trying to stop Brexit.
Bercow ignored centuries of established procedure, over-rode his clerks and let hardline Remainer MP Dominic Grieve spring an amendment on an unamendable motion.
I’ll spare you all the technicalities but it was like a judge, overseeing the trial of one of his golf club cronies, suddenly ripping up legal convention to give the defence a deadly advantage.
When lawmakers start dishonouring the rules, why shouldn’t anyone else?
But that way violence lies. When established procedures are cynically abandoned, people may conclude there is no alternative but physical force.
The British Establishment has always hated Brexit.
For two years it pulled every trick trying to make sure we would not leave its beloved European Union.
The Supreme Court, BBC, House of Lords, business and professional lobbies, arts luvvies, George Osborne, Sir Dicky Branson, Tony Blair and his billionaire chum George Soros — they all did their darnedest to screw Brexit.
Yet the people had spoken. Remainers were finding it hard to stop the countdown to Freedom Day, March 29, when our membership of the EU is due to end.
They had tried slagging off the 17.4million Leave voters as racists and morons but we shrugged off their insults. They tried stitching together Theresa May’s pathetic withdrawal agreement, which is little more than associate EU membership. But we didn’t fall for it.
Opinion polls show Mrs May’s deal is about as popular as halitosis in a space helmet.
Then Remainers like Grieve and Blair and mouldy old Michael Heseltine, who is for ever being given air-time by the Beeb, loftily told us “no deal” would be disastrous.
The more they banged on about how apocalyptic it would be to “crash out” of the EU, the more embarrassingly clear it became that they had few solid reasons for saying so.
They just couldn’t bear the idea of admitting they were wrong.
The more the rest of us looked at what “no deal” really entailed, the more we started to warm to the idea.
There might be a few teething problems for just-in-time factory production lines but they would probably be sorted out after a few days.
After that we would be independent and could set our own tax rates, import duties and do our own trade deals, while not paying Jean-Claude Juncker’s ludicrous £39billion ransom.
In short, “no deal” was what most of us understood by Leave in the first place, until Remainers started to smudge things with their tricksy qualifiers and clever-clever small-printery.
A no-deal Brexit would leave us properly independent and it could be a success. That is what Remainers most fear.
With Freedom Day now just 11 weeks away, they have been getting desperate.
And when politicians become desperate, they think about breaking the rules.
It happened with US President Richard Nixon and Watergate, when he started snooping on opponents.
It happened with despots such as Uganda’s Idi Amin and Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu.
And it happened, albeit less murderously, when Remainers resorted to Tuesday’s blazingly improper shenanigans in the Commons.
From a distance it may all have looked ludicrous, MPs going purple in the face as they boinged to their feet to vent points of order and read legalistic sub-paragraphs from the parliamentary rulebook Erskine May.
It might be tempting to dismiss it all as another crazy hoo-hah at the Westminster loony bin. I wish I could be so sanguine.
As we saw earlier this week, aggression levels on the streets outside Parliament have been rising.
Channel 4’s Brexit drama on Monday night revived memories of the assassination of Labour MP Jo Cox during the climax of the 2016 referendum campaign.
Politics in Britain at present, and across the whole of Europe for that matter, is an open, sloshing bucket of inflammable petrol. We don’t need any sparks.
Since the days of Oliver Cromwell, Parliament has existed for two reasons — to represent the views of the people and to pass laws.
In the first respect, it is failing lamentably.
You do not have to be a politics wonk to see that Remainer Tory MPs are combining with Labour and other Opposition parties to try to neutralise the referendum result.
It was the largest ever vote in British history and 300 careerist MPs think they can block it.
No longer are these people “parliamentary” in its Cromwellian sense of giving voice to the people.
As far as Parliament being a law factory, something equally rum is happening.
MPs, with the help of the Speaker, are now breaking their own rules to dictate to us. Why should anyone respect laws which are minted by such a fake process?
If this sort of thing happened in a courtroom, you could mount an appeal.
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But there is no way to appeal against the Speaker of the Commons. He has absolute power.
That is why it has always been so vital that Speakers be totally honest.
And that is why it is such a very grave problem that he is a wrong ’un.
https://textbacklinkexchanges.com/temperatures-are-rising-over-brexit-but-violence-will-make-the-british-parliament-a-laughing-stock/
News Pictures Temperatures are rising over Brexit but violence will make the British Parliament a laughing stock
You don’t have to pack away your bikini just because you’re the wrong side of 20. These body-beautiful stars reveal their secrets to staying in shape and prove you can smoulder in a two-piece, whatever your age. Read on and be bikini inspired!
TEENS
Hayden Panettiere
Size: 8
Age: 18
Height: 5ft 1in
Weight: 8st
To achieve her kick-ass figure, Hayden – who plays cheerleader Claire Bennet in Heroes – follows the ‘quartering’ rule. She eats only a quarter of the food on her plate, then waits 20 minutes before deciding whether she needs to eat again.
Hayden says: “I don’t have a model’s body, but I’m not one of those crazy girls who thinks that they’re fat. I’m OK with what I have.”
Nicollette says: “I don’t like diets – I see it, I eat it! I believe in eating healthily with lots of protein, vegetables and carbs to give you energy.”
kim cattrall
Size: 10-12
Age: 52
Height: 5ft 8in
Weight: 9st 4lb
SATC star Kim swears by gym sessions with Russian kettle bells (traditional cast-iron weights) and the South Beach Diet to give her the body she wants. To avoid overeating, Kim has a radical diet trick – squirting lemon juice on her leftovers – so she won’t carry on picking.
Kim says: “I am no super-thin Hollywood actress. I am built for men who like women to look like women.”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/NINTCHDBPICT000460510773-e1547162064366.jpg?strip=all&w=960
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