British Lawmakers Yelling Indignantly About a Ceremonial Mace, Explained
Nearly one full year after a somber politician delivered the most British sequence in recorded history, punishing himself for a few minutes of tardiness by resigning from Parliament, a briefly-pilfered ceremonial mace in the House of Commons has officially supplanted it.
The presence of the gigantic silver-gilt mace that stars in this clip, it turns out, is very important in the House of Commons, where it symbolizes the queen's authority; in its absence, Parliament cannot legally meet or pass laws. On Monday, prime minister Theresa May announced that she would delay a vote on her controversial proposal to implement Brexit, after it became clear that lawmakers intended to reject it. So, as the already-tense chamber devolved further into a state of courteous, officious grousing, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, a member of the Labour Party, elected to display his contempt for the entire affair by—get this—walking up and taking the fucking mace away.
What follows this chap's astonishing display of rebelliousness is, in order: Russell-Moyle holding with the mace before the speaker's dais like he's posing for a baseball card portrait; a dismayed chorus of cries of "No!"; a ton of men in suits pointing excitedly at the mace, as if anyone in the room wasn't transfixed by the scene already; two ladies from the serjeant-at-arm's office quickly restoring it to its proper resting place; and the House of Commons' suddenly-sputtering speaker, John Bercow, expelling Russell-Moyle for his crimes. (Pay close attention at the 29-second mark, when perfectly-timed lull in the commotion yields someone spitting out the word "disGUSTing" like a Republican congressman who'd just been forced to take in a 2 Live Crew performance.)
Russell-Moyle, for his part, said afterwards that he removed the mace to symbolize Parliament's abdication of its duty to govern, and not out of some misguided notion that holding it in his hands would, by operation of some kind of Sword In The Stone-esque magic, immediately make him king. His explanation for the brevity of his gesture is a pragmatic one: "They stopped me before I got out of the chamber, and I wasn’t going to struggle with someone wearing a huge sword on their hip." Fair enough!
Thanks to The Daily Beast's Tim Burke, there is also some delightful alternate-angle footage of British people yelling indignantly about an oversized club. My favorite is the robe-wearing gentleman in front who taps his colleague on the shoulder and then whips off his own glasses like he's about to resort to fisticuffs, but if you prefer the man in the blue suit who finds himself incapable of doing anything other than dying while standing up, I'm willing to hear you out.
More legislatures should make use of medieval weapons of war in their day-to-day operations. If a wily team of Senate Democrats were to abscond with it, there is no chance that Mitch McConnell is fleet of foot enough to retrieve it.
