There has been chaos and outrage in Parliament this week.
- A motion that was tabled by a minority party, the SNP, in Parliament to back an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza.
- The Speaker of the House, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, decided to go against official advice and selected a Labour amendment to a motion reserved for the SNP.
- Our constitution is convention-driven. The Convention states that the Government's amendment is adopted; as opposed to the opposition's. Instead, the rules were changed. He explained that he wanted to give MPs “the widest possible range of options”.
- Tory MPs felt the Speaker had been bullied and cajoled into helping the leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer, who was facing another huge revolt by many of his MPs. The Labour party has a longstanding problem with antisemitism. Nick Watt, BBC Newsnight political editor, wrote that there had been some blackmail to undermine Parliament's conventions to get Labour out of a hole:
"Senior Labour figures tell me @CommonsSpeaker was left in no doubt that Labour would bring him down after the General Election unless he called Labour’s Gaza amendment. The message was: you will need our votes to be re-elected as Speaker after election, with strong indications this would not be forthcoming if he failed to call the Labour amendment.
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My thoughts:
- Israel will rightly ignore all of this grandstanding. Can you imagine some other country’s politicians dictating to us when, and on what terms, we are allowed to defend ourselves!
- This ceasefire vote has nothing to do with Gaza. The SNP wanted to create trouble within the House of Commons. It has everything to do with rising levels of antisemitism. Hoyle cited Labour MPs fear that they would be physically attacked by Hamas and Islamist supporters in England if they weren’t visibly voting against Israel! So, Starmer applied emotional pressure on Hoyle and the Speaker suddenly upturned convention and rules to pander to the mobs.
Update: Amended as per comments.
You always write valid and objective arguments here. Most of these Hamas and Islamic supporters would have been raped and executed if they travel to Gaza themselves.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the nice complement. And yes, indeed.
DeleteI also join in the compliments. It was talked about here in the news a few days ago. And now the Eurovision Song Contest, the Israeli song is called October Rain, Israel is required to change the song or its participation will be canceled. In any case Malmo in Sweden where the competition is supposed to be held is already a Muslim city and very dangerous for Jews. I wonder where else things will go.
ReplyDeleteHello Yael,
DeleteReally? They have to change their own song! Christ. Almost tempted to say to hell with eurovision.
Hope you've been having a nice weekend.
The uproar in Parliament was disgraceful.
ReplyDeleteIs anywhere safe for Jews now?
Good morning Liam, you have a good clear mind in setting out what needs to be said. But......
ReplyDelete"Labour heartlands with rising mobs of Islamists and woke identity-political leftists"
I live 'Up North' in a town where there is a Muslim population and I find it very quiet on the streets ;) Language can convey so much but also can trick us into seeing 'reds under the bed,' when there are none. What happened in our parliament was infuriating but if people start fighting because of the bias of ethnicity, it will get worse not better, see the current rumble on Sadiq Khan.
Hello Thelma.
DeleteYes, I quite agree. That was a bit of a clumsy sentence and way overstating the problem. Thank you for picking that up.
Hope you're having a nice weekend =]