After all the false alarms, the crisis of British democracy is finally here. The cause is not a nebulous concept like “disinformation” or a prime minister getting ousted by her own party in less time than it took a head of lettuce to brown, as was the amusing case with Liz Truss in 2022. The actual democratic process has come under assault, and London is buckling under the pressure.
This all came to a head on Wednesday. Now there is full agreement across the political spectrum on what happened and why. The unanswered question is whether the “Mother of Parliaments,” as England’s contribution to democracy is known, will do anything about it.
On Wednesday, the opposition Scottish National Party put up a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Normally, the House of Commons would then vote on it. But the speaker of the House jettisoned the normal process and first allowed the Labour Party to water down the language in the resolution.
Why did the speaker let Labour hijack someone else’s bill? Because, he said, he feared Labour members of parliament would be assassinated by pro-Hamas thugs if they didn’t get the language exactly right.
“I will defend every member in this House. Every member matters to me in this House,” Speaker Lindsay Hoyle explained. “And it has been said, both…
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