A Scottish MP was suspended from the UK’s House of Commons on Wednesday after defying orders to take his seat and grabbing the parliamentary mace in protest over the approval of controversial Brexit legislation.
During a debate on the UK Internal Market Bill, Drew Hendry, an MP for the Scottish National Party (SNP) could be heard shouting, “this is an outrage!”
Deputy Speaker of the Commons, Dame Rosie Winterton, ordered the MP for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey to sit down, accusing him of “showing off” and being “very childish.”
The deputy speaker also threatened to “name him” – a Westminster term for disciplining MPs – after Hendry’s initial outburst.
However, he ignored the orders and headed for the door, grabbing the parliamentary mace as he went. The mace is a symbol of royal authority, without which the Commons cannot meet or pass laws. Doorkeepers took the mace from Hendry and he was then suspended from the House for the day’s sitting.
The commotion came as the Commons approved changes to the legislation, which governs the way the UK will trade post-Brexit, and will now become law if the House of Lords also approves it.
In September the government admitted that the bill may break international law due to it potentially conflicting with the Withdrawal Agreement reached with Brussels, and although it has since been revised, it remains controversial.
Political parties in the UK’s devolved nations have claimed that the bill will afford Westminster too much power in setting trade policy after Brexit, and the Welsh government has threatened to take the UK government to court over it.
SNP President Michael Russell described the bill as “undemocratic” in a tweet on Wednesday, adding that he congratulated Hendry for “speaking truth to power.”
Hendry is not the first MP to grab the mace and attempt to remove it from the Commons - and is not even the first to perform the symbolic stunt during the Brexit era.
In 2018, Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle caused uproar in parliament as he grabbed the object and walked towards the door after the postponement of a vote on then-prime minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal.
Also on rt.com Macron wants strong ties with UK after Brexit, as Johnson hopes EU ‘sees sense’ & agrees on trade dealUK and EU negotiators are continuing talks this week in the hope that they can reach a post-Brexit trade deal before the December 31 deadline.
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