Parliament’s socially distanced voting system is a shambles – 18 scathing reactions
Jacob Rees-Mogg ended weeks of his own complaining about MPs working from home by insisting parliament vote on whether to return to working onsite.
If Parliament is to deliver on the people’s priorities it must sit physically.
https://t.co/nAWSyB8XSo— Jacob Rees-Mogg (@Jacob_Rees_Mogg) June 1, 2020
With most MPs communicating via video link and voting remotely, the House of Commons had been refreshingly peaceful.
NOPE. It's been so much better since it went virtual. No braying schoolboys. No finger-wagging. No drowning each other out, no bullying. Just something grown-up and modern and far more mature where you're actually held to account. I say keep it!
— Danny Wallace 🇪🇺 (@dannywallace) June 1, 2020
As the virtual voting system had been allowed to end, the vote had to take place in person – because it’s obviously far easier to get MPs from all over the country into one building during a pandemic than it is to reinstate the virtual voting system.
Current government guidelines mean the vote would be unavailable to MPs who were shielding for their own or a family member’s health.
I’m a carer for my wife. You’re asking me to choose between the health of my family and abiding by your poxy stubbornness.
I choose to fulfill my duties as a husband and family man. https://t.co/oU5nPCJdzh
— Jamie Stone MP (@Jamie4North) June 1, 2020
Or it could force them to break the rules.
Conservative MP Robert Halfon, who is shielding, is planning to drive to Parliament tomorrow to vote for a virtual Parliament before jumping in the car and going straight back home again — reports @andrewpolitics
— Chris Mason (@ChrisMasonBBC) June 1, 2020
People weren’t impressed.
1.
Cosplaying Edwardian Jacob Rees-Mogg determined to make MPs physically vote in the House of Commons, even if they have to queue one km like patient daytrippers at a shit Alton Towers ride.https://t.co/bn1hoJAp3M
— Otto English (@Otto_English) June 1, 2020
2.
you can't trust computers so it's vital that MPs vote in the traditional way to enact projects like track and trace and universal credit
— joe (@mutablejoe) June 2, 2020
3.
Rees-Mogg is behaving like the sort of odious prep school creep whose dearest wish is to be Head Boy, and to stand beside the Master looking sanctimonious when other boys are being punished. This is what our system has produced.
— Philip Pullman (@PhilipPullman) June 2, 2020
Rees-Mogg’s arrangements involved socially distanced queuing – for about a kilometre. It was a tedious and chaotic process.
4.
This is the stupidest thing I have ever read pic.twitter.com/CsvC4UdTFb
— Patrick Maguire (@patrickkmaguire) June 1, 2020
5.
We’re starting to run out of space on the grassy knoll whilst queueing for 2nd vote. Exasperated security man just asked if we ‘could bunch up’
“Errr, No not really.” pic.twitter.com/RyqgUMvTjn— Toby Perkins (@tobyperkinsmp) June 2, 2020
6.
In 2020 the whips should be able to take your name down, you can go and do some shopping and then they text you when a table is free
— Esther Webber (@estwebber) June 2, 2020
7.
But would you rather be in the Ikea queue or the Parliament queue?
— Hugo Rifkind (@hugorifkind) June 2, 2020
