the great parliamentary spectacular

It was always the case that, once our Watergate arrived, it was going to be special. The yanks might generate good conspiracy theory fodder, what with being the most powerful country in the world and everything, but you never heard of anyone threatening to do this in Washington DC:

John Whittingdale, the Tory chair of the committee, was advised by the parliamentary authorities that he could refer the matter to the Commons if the Murdochs failed to accept the summons to appear on Tuesday. MPs could then vote to summon them to the bar of the Commons – the strip on the floor of the house marking the end of the standing section for MPs – where they could have been informed of their punishment. This could have included admonishment, a fine or imprisonment, possibly in a cell under Big Ben. (Full article)

Thankyou, Britain. Sometimes the fact that our version of political modernity got jammed somewhere around 1700 almost seems worth it. But it's worth noting that, when it comes to parading pre-modern ritual as post-modern spectacle, The Royal Family are really making the running these days, as Wills and Kates are managing to demonstrate, without so much as a third person in their marriage.

If Parliament wants to keep up, I recommend that the Murdochs are not only imprisoned under Big Ben, but that Hugh Grant and Steve Coogan adopt the livery of Cromwellian prison guards, and keep watch over them 24/7. Cameras will be on standby to broadcast the gradual deterioration of the Murdochian mental state, while The Guardian live-blogs the whole sordid affair, until eventually Alan Sugar decides which one of them is garrotted in the grounds of the Tower of London. You think Nixon had it bad?

Comments

[Matt]

In a way it's depressing that this is how the world perceives us. The claims for moat cleaning didn't help. But Britain's institutions are not out-dated through neglect: they have been self-consciously made and maintained this way.

The chamber of the House of Commons was completed in 1950 to replace an earlier one destroyed by bombing. It could have been built big enough to seat all 640+ MPs comfortably. But Winston Churchill understood that over-crowding heightens the drama of big occasions, so only 427 seats were provided. Every PMQs the Commons is over capacity - that's not a bug, it's a feature :)

http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/building/palace/architecture/palacestructure/churchill/

[Dick Pountain]

Garrotting sounds a bit foreign to me - I'm sure we still have the axe used on Charlie I.

[Joe Fernwright]

Sorry to be a dissenter here, but to my mind it is the United States that is jammed around 1700 - a 18th Century limited monarchy based on an 18th century distrust of both monarchy and democracy. So the one democratic right you do not have is to elect a sovereign parliament. Instead democracy is defined as separation of powers! Hence the tendency to "gridlock", and since human nature sometimes abhors a vacuum, political power devolving on the rich.
On the other hand, since we have an imaginary (sorry, unwritten) constitution, parliament can and does change it as we go along.