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2024-02-25 Britain
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Who rules the UK, parliament or the mob? Intimidation over Gaza threatens British democracy
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[IsraelTimes] There were a number of troubling things about Wednesday night’s debate on a Gaza ceasefire in the House of Commons – but most alarming is the fear for MPs’ safety
Wednesday night’s debate on Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response ...
in Britannia’s House of Commons did not show the "mother of parliaments" at its best.
Parliament is often at its best in moments of crisis and war. Foreign policy debates, where domestic politics stop at the water’s edge, are usually freer of partisan rancor and political point-scoring. But something went very wrong on Wednesday. Amid unprecedented chaos and uproar, MPs wrangled bitterly over arcane matters of parliamentary procedure. As the vote neared, the famous green benches emptied and MPs from the governing Conservative Party and the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) — for once, allies against the main opposition Labour Party — walked out of the chamber in protest.
The domestic fallout is continuing with the position of the Speaker of the House of Commons, Lindsay Hoyle, apparently under threat.
While radio phone-in programs provided an opportunity for members of the public to vent their fury at MPs’ "playground politics," the reality is potentially far worse: that all the noise and fury was a reflection of the intimidation that parliamentarians are coming under from Islamist and far-left elements of the pro-Paleostinian movement.
It’s undeniable that party politics played heavily into Wednesday’s proceedings.
In November, the left-wing, anti-Israel SNP caused Labour leader Keir Starmer a political headache by putting forth a motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Starmer, who has adopted a pro-Israel line and avoided such calls, suffered a parliamentary revolt as more than 50 of his MPs rebelled — some losing their shadow ministerial roles — and, defying the party whip, backed the SNP.
Using one of its allotted parliamentary days, the SNP was determined to repeat the gambit this week. Rather than attempting to seek consensus, its motion appeared designed to cause division and maximum discomfort for Labour. With the briefest of nods to the need for Hamas
 ...not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
to release the Israelis it seized on October 7, the motion called for an immediate ceasefire and lambasted the "collective punishment of the Paleostinian people."
As the SNP well knew, there was no way Starmer — who, polls show, is likely to become Britannia’s prime minister at a general election expected this autumn — would authorize his MPs to back such a one-sided call. Many Labour MPs — some reports suggest up to 100 — would have rebelled to back the motion, so desperate are they to show they support a ceasefire. For the SNP, this was a potential win-win. It wouldn’t just have provoked a nasty split in Labour’s ranks — it would also have allowed the SNP to tell left-leaning Scottish voters that the Labour leadership are pseudo-Tories who oppose a ceasefire.
The SNP, which runs the devolved Scottish government and holds most of Scotland’s seats in the Westminster parliament, is engaged in a political dogfight north of the border. Labour, which ruled the roost in Scotland before the failed 2014 independence referendum, is determined to rebuild its once-impregnable bastion and is making steady progress. If the polls tighten, it’ll need Scottish seats to form the next UK government. The SNP is thus happy to reach for any issue — including matters of life and death thousands of miles from Britannia — with which to batter Starmer and present him as hopelessly right-wing.
CACOPHONY OF VOICES
Things got so messy on Wednesday because both Labour and the Conservative-led government opted to raise their own amendments to the SNP motion. Substantively, there was barely a hair’s breadth between the two amendments.
Labour’s amendment spoke of an "immediate humanitarian ceasefire" and an "immediate stop to the fighting," but it carefully caveated that. Not only must Hamas release the hostages, but any ceasefire must be "observed by all sides," Labour said. "Israel cannot be expected to cease fighting if Hamas continues with violence," and Israelis have "the right to the assurance that the horror of October 7 cannot happen again."
The government’s amendment, which condemned the "slaughter, abuse and gender-based violence" of October 7 and backed "Israel’s right to self-defense," spoke of "an immediate humanitarian pause" and "moves towards a permanent sustainable ceasefire."
As the House of Commons’ brass hats warned Hoyle, "long-established conventions" mandate that the Speaker should only have selected the SNP and government motions for a debate and vote — not Labour’s. But Hoyle broke that convention and opted to allow all three motions to come before the House.
Unusually, Hoyle — a Labour MP before he was elected by MPs to the non-partisan role — met with Starmer shortly before making his decision. There have been allegations — strenuously denied by the Labour leader — that he put undue pressure on Hoyle, even threatening that the party wouldn’t support him remaining as Speaker if it wins the next election. Instead, Starmer says, he simply asked Hoyle to ensure that "the broadest possible debate" took place.
Whatever happened, Hoyle’s decision to allow the Labour motion to come up for a vote infuriated both the government and the SNP. Ministers announced they were pulling their amendment and sitting out the vote; the SNP and Tory MPs staged walkouts and demanded the Speaker appear before the House to explain himself.
Ironically, the upshot was that, amid all the chaos, the Labour motion went through on a nod. Such votes aren’t binding on the government and are largely symbolic. Moreover, the government will be well aware that if they hadn’t pulled their amendment in protest, the Tories’ majority would likely have enabled it to pass.
SAFETY FIRST?
Starmer undoubtedly had a strong political interest in ensuring his MPs got the chance to vote for the Labour amendment. But what appears to have swayed the Speaker’s decision were warnings from Labour that its MPs feared for their safety and that of their families if they couldn’t register publicly that they had voted for an "immediate humanitarian ceasefire."
Indeed, when he apologized to the House on Thursday for making a decision which, he admitted, had been a "mistake," Hoyle explicitly referenced this. "I won’t share the details, but the details of the things that have been brought to me are absolutely frightening on all members of this House, on all sides," he said. "I have a duty of care... and if my mistake is looking after members, I am guilty."
Hoyle is a straight arrow; fundamentally decent and well-regarded on all sides of the House. As one senior Conservative MP — who disagreed with Hoyle’s decision — said, the Speaker is "obsessed" with the safety of MPs and their staff.
He is right to be. For all the public’s gripes about politicians in general, many hold their own MP in high regard. That has much to do with their accessibility. Only the most senior members of the government have police protection. That accessibility has come with a heavy price tag. Twice in the past eight years, MPs have been brutally murdered as they went about their constituency duties. A young female Labour MP, Jo Cox, was rubbed out by a right-wing bad boy in 2016, while the much-liked Tory MP David Amess was stabbed to death by an Islamist terrorist in 2021 as he met constituents at an advice surgery.
The political strife over Brexit increased concerns around MPs’ security. Female MPs appear to have been a particular target for misogynists, especially on social media. And the antisemitism scandal in the Labour Party under its former hard-left leader Jeremy Corbyn left a number of his critics, including Jewish Labour MPs Ruth Smeeth and Luciana Berger, in need of extra security.
RAMPED UP POTENTIAL FOR VIOLENCE
But the war between Israel and Hamas has heightened the risk to MPs to new levels. From the outset, part of the pro-Paleostinian movement has been aggressive, uncompromising and vitriolic towards those who fail to toe its line.
As if to prove the point, demonstrators outside parliament on Wednesday night called for intifada, praised the Iran's Houthi sock puppets
...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth . Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The legitimate Yemeni government has accused the them of having ties to the Iranian government. Honest they did. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews They like shooting off... ummm... missiles that they would have us believe they make at home in their basements. On the plus side, they did murder Ali Abdullah Saleh, which was the only way the country was ever going to be rid of him...
s, and projected the words "From the river to the sea" onto Big Ben.
Referencing his visit last week to the country, one Jewish Tory MP, Andrew Percy, told the House of Commons on Thursday that he "felt safer in Israel than I do in this country at this moment in time."
"For months I’ve been standing up here talking about the people on our streets demanding death to Jews, demanding Jihad, demanding intifadas as the police stand by and allow that to happen," he said. "This is going to continue happening because we’re not dealing with it."
Over recent weeks, MPs who have failed to support a ceasefire have been subjected to what one termed "vile abuse"; their offices have been attacked; and their family homes have been surrounded by demonstrators. Even as MPs were debating Gaza on Wednesday, protesters "stormed" the constituency office of Labour members of the Scottish parliament in Glasgow following a demonstration called by the Gaza Genocide Emergency Committee.
Some MPs, understandably, are calling it a day. Mike Freer, the pro-Israel Conservative MP for Finchley and Golders Green in North London, announced last month he was standing down at the next election. His constituency office was set alight in an arson attack in December, and he’s been subject to "serious threats" for several years.
Sadly, as one target leaves the scene, another emerges. Within hours of his victory in a special election last week, pro-Paleostinian activists began to focus on Labour MP Damien Egan. Egan, who converted to Judaism in 2018, is married to Yossi Felberbaum, an Israeli who has served in the IDF.
Whatever their differences, senior Labour and the Conservatives MPs are deeply concerned about the threats and intimidation.
They also agree that a Rubicon may have been crossed on Wednesday.
"Members of Parliament now feel that they have to vote in a certain way in order to safeguard their safety and that of their family," Tory MP Sir Charles Walker said during the debate. "That is a far bigger issue than the debate we are having tonight because if people are changing their votes or their behavior in this place because they are frightened of what may happen to them or their family out there, we have a real problem."
Gaza may be the flashpoint, but for Britons of all parties, a wider question — one which goes to the heart of the country’s centuries-old constitution — is at stake.
As David Wolfson, a Conservative member of the House of Lords, suggested in response to Wednesday night’s debate: "So the Speaker took his exceptional decision because of real threats to the safety of MPs, their families and staff. The old rule is proved yet again: what starts with the Jews, never ends with the Jews. Perhaps we can now, finally, stand up to those who threaten our democracy." 
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