Quote of the day 22nd February 2024

"Hurt, slightly bewildered, Hoyle crept back to the Commons to apologise for breaking parliamentary convention. Labour had told him its MPs were under threat, afraid of attacks on their families and their security being at risk if they couldn’t register publicly that they had voted for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire”. This, say Hoyle’s people, was a pressure that weighed heavily on him.

And if that’s true, that is more serious than anything else that happened in the Commons chaos of yesterday: that MPs, and even their party leaders, are saying they are under such threat, so physically intimidated, that they felt they must vote in a particular way. The speaker seemed to endorse that as a good reason for allowing them the chance to cast a vote under threat. Pause and think about that: it really is a sinister new low."

Polly Toynbee, writing in the Guardian here about yesterday's row in the House of Commons yesterday.

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