Yesterday (Thursday 11 May) was a wonderful demonstration of why we are blessed to have a sovereign Parliament.
The Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch had informed the Press before telling Parliament about the decision to remove the deadline for abolishing hampering EU legislation.
Coming to the House to explain, she began with an unfortunate turn of phrase - 'I'm very sorry that the sequencing that we chose was not to your satisfaction' - that sounded as though it was a minor matter and that Speaker Hoyle had simply had a fit of the vapours at being overlooked.
It did one's heart good to hear Sir Lindsay's eruption:
'I think we need to understand each other. I am the defender of this House and these benches on both sides. These members have been elected by their constituents and they have the right to hear it first and it is time this government recognized we're all elected, we're all members of Parliament.'
This is how power is. It may begin with a perhaps unintentional insolence but if that is tolerated then we shall move towards open arrogance and well, tyranny.
Does that sound like an extreme statement? Consider the Brexit 'referendum' of 2016 and how all sides assured us that the decision would be implemented, however it went - so making it a binding plebiscite, in effect.
What has happened in the nigh-on seven years since?
We're on our fifth Prime Minister and the one we have now was not voted in by the country at large via a General Election (we all know the technical arrangement but in practice people consider the party leaders.) Nor was he chosen even by the Conservative Party membership.
We have a cuckoo.
And now that cuckoo continues to pour petrol on the Ukraine barbecue, regards a coup in Pakistan as an internal matter despite its dire geopolitical implications, persists in promoting the fantasy that a few plane trips to central Africa is anything more than a gnat's bite of a solution to the huge problem of net immigration, and seems to be losing a sense of urgency about completing our detachment from the toils and traps of the EU.
What Sir Keir Starmer would be like, who can say?
With politicians in power it is as P G Wodehouse said of aunts:
'At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof.'
That is why we have Parliament, to defend its prerogatives and our freedom.
Which is why we must also review how we choose our representatives, and stop both sides colluding when one should submit the other to firm interrogation.
