Why courage is the most important virtue

The ‘long shadow’ of violence cast over British political life

There has been a lot of Churchillian drift floating around in recent weeks, but one quote from the great man which I’m pretty confident about concerns virtue.

‘Courage is the first of human qualities,’ he said (probably) ‘because it is the quality which guarantees all others.’

Never a truer word was spoken by the great wartime leader - or was it Samuel Johnson? – something illustrated by this week’s events in Parliament.

British Parliamentary procedure is arcane even to British people but to foreigners it is as baffling as that game we play with sticks. So, to those who don’t understand how Parliament works in the Mother of Parliaments, this is what happened on Wednesday, and why it is so troubling.

It concerned an amendment by the Scottish National Party calling for a vote on an ‘immediate ceasefire’ in Gaza, which Parliament’s third-largest party is able to do under Standing Order 30.

This was obviously symbolic, since Britain’s influence on the conflict is minimal and I doubt anyone in Israel cares what the SNP thinks, but nevertheless.

Ordinarily in Westminster, Government motions come first (as per Standing Order 14) but the exception are ‘Opposition Day Debates’, where the Government allows opposition parties – both the Official Opposition and the third party - an allotted number of debates per session, usually three for the official opposition, and one for the third party. 

The order of who takes part in debates is important. It is usually the Government first, followed by the Official Opposition, and after that the third party. However, Opposition Day Debates are opened by the opposition party which tabled the debate motion, followed by the Government, then the other parties – so in this case the SNP, then the Conservatives, and Labour last. The same goes for specific amendments to the motion, and because these debates are time limited, it means that not all amendments can be debated and voted on. The SNP were allowed to choose two motions to debate on Wednesday in their allotted time, but they decided on only one, the motion on Gaza.

Labour, which is heavily divided on the Gaza issue, introduced an amendment to the SNP motion watering it down. But as the Government also tabled an amendment to the ceasefire motion, that pushed Labour's amendment down into third place, and as it was a very oversubscribed debate, there wouldn’t have been time to vote on it.

This is just how it works, and has done for decades. It meant that Labour MPs would be forced to either defy the party whip to vote for the SNP ceasefire motion, or vote against it – and this would upset a lot of their constituents, many of whom have made violent threats against MPs.

And so Labour effectively used the threat of violence to persuade the Speaker of the House to overturn the rules, so that their MPs could vote for Starmer's more moderate amendment.

In the Daily Telegraph, Fred de Fossard explained how it went:

‘The Scottish National Party’s Opposition Day Debate was designed to extract maximum pain from the Labour Party. That is politics. The SNP has an established third-party privilege to table motions for debate on their allotted Opposition Days. These have been governed by the Standing Orders of the House of Commons for decades. These Orders establish the rules of the Commons, and are the closest thing Britain has to a written constitution. 

‘These were upended by the Speaker, who changed proceedings to give precedent to the Labour Party’s amendment to the motion. This was extraordinary, and was announced by a haunted, scared looking Hoyle. While procedural chaos proceeded and intemperate speeches were made, the Labour Party ultimately got its way, with the SNP and Conservatives left empty-handed.’

It was all the more extraordinary because Speaker Lindsay Hoyle was quite clear that Parliamentary procedure was upended because of fears about safety. In a heartfelt admission, Hoyle said he was doing so because of the threat of violence: ‘I don’t ever want to go through the situation of picking up a phone to find that a friend, of whatever side, has been murdered by terrorists. I also don’t want another attack on this house.’ On top of this, the decision was also made to make the sitting private, which is extremely unusual.

Even more disturbing was the tone of the debate. At one point, the Peterborough Conservative MP Paul Bristow said: ‘On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance on how I can make my views more known to my constituents. I was one of the first Members of Parliament to call for the release of hostages, combined with a permanent ceasefire. I lost my Government job as a result. Because people misrepresented my position, someone suggested on social media that they would show my wife a real man. Someone else suggested that they would attack me and my family. Already today, Labour councillors in my patch are tweeting that I have not supported a ceasefire. I wanted to vote with the Scottish National party motion on a ceasefire. Can you advise me how I can make my constituents clear of my views, given that I was not able to vote?’

One MP was reported as saying that: ‘Some of us are really scared to leave. One of my female colleagues was surrounded by nasty protesters in Westminster Hall earlier and filmed etc. she was in tears when she came back to tearoom. Just saying, it is intolerable.’

While this was happening, outside a group of protesters projected the slogan ‘from the river to the sea’ onto Parliament, something that most Jews feel to be a genocidal call to arms, but which the Metropolitan Police seem fine with.

On the same day, the Glasgow constituency office of Labour MSPs was stormed by protestors, ‘terrifying and threatening’ their staff.

Meanwhile, Labour MP Barry Gardiner was calling for improved security after a deranged dentist was detained for threatening to behead him, while another Labour representative told the Commons that he ‘doesn't stand at the edge of tube platforms’ and has altered the routes he walks into Parliament because of death threats, and being told the person responsible ‘is now free and knows where I live’. Lucy Powell, the Labour leader of the House of Commons, spoke of the ‘long shadow’ of violence being cast over political life.

This is not normal in a democracy. Indeed, Tory MP Robert Jenrick called it ’a dark day for our democracy. It’s part of a pattern of Islamist extremists intimidating those they disagree with, backed by the prospect of violence. We must call it what it is and have the confidence in our liberal values to push back robustly.’

This feels like a Rubicon, but then we’ve passed Rubicons before. There are many who are too invested in pretending there isn’t a huge problem, either out of the human desire to avoid confronting reality, or because they have invested too much in the ideas which have brought us down this road.