Dog Days Parliament is in the doghouse. The Session ended
with protest tetters from study and rectory, boardroom and commonroom. In general we were thought to be too rude, too controversial, too destructive. Parliament is not what it used to be. Parliament. in fact, never was. Study the Hansards of any golden age—the Asquith days, Disraeli-Gladstone, Lord Melbourne, Pitt—and you will find three common factors. First, the words they used were much more violent than any modern MP would dream of using. Second, there was far more controversy than there is now. Third, exactly the same protest letters were being written with exactly the same arguments.
The House of Commons is indeed a curious place, which is probably why most people who don't know it can't understand it. It is a rough place : it can behave like the fourth form and the mother of all Parliaments in the space of a single speech. Only those who love it, succeed in it.
And seven hundred years on from Simon -de Montfort. it is perhaps getting a little late to change. Anyway, these are the dog days, and I do not mind the doghouse in a good cause.
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