Big babies

After a BBC news report of a particularly petulant and bad-tempered exchange between the then Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition while I was a child, my mother turned to my father and said

"We've got a lot of babies running the country."

I was reminded of this by the behaviour of both the largest contingents of Britain's new MEPs in the European Parliament today.

The MEPs from the Brexit party turned their backs when Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" which is the unofficial anthem of the EU was played - not, incidentally - a recording, but a live performance by a youth orchestra who had presumably put quite a bit of work into preparing for it.

The last time I saw people behave like this was in student politics. In my student days it was for a time a fashion at conferences of the National Union of Students method of showing extreme disagreement with someone of differing political opinions to stand up and pointedly turn your back on them.

I wasn't impressed at the time when I saw people in their teens and twenties who had been elected to represent their colleges behaving in such a rude and divisive manner. It didn't look any better when grown men and women who had been elected to represent their country behaved in the same way today.

Nor was I impressed with the second largest continent of Britain's MEPs, the Liberal Democrats, who all wore shirts with an Anti-Brexit slogan in very crude Anglo-Saxon language ("B******* to Brexit") on the back.

Personally I don't think wearing clothes which effectively swear at 17.4 million of your fellow citizens, the majority of those who voted in a referendum, was a good look for grown men and women who have been elected to represent their country either.

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