I have been tardy in posting this film of proceedings in the European Parliament, especially as I helped find it and get it on to YouTube. (Or more accurately tried to find it and congratulated others in the Group for getting it together).

It shows all those great defenders of democracy who gifted the President of Parliament arbitrary powers over the proceedings in the chamber, you know those ones who created synthetic rage about Dan Hannan.

As he puts it on his blog

You can see the Liberal leader, Graham Watson claiming that the sceptics’ behaviour “recalls the actions of the Communists in the Russian Diet and the National Socialists in the German Reichstag”. (Can this be the same Graham Watson who claimed that my own far more discreet reference to the Enabling Act “plumbs new depths in UK-EU relations and in the Tories’ approach to democracy in the EU”?) And you can see the Socialist leader Martin Shulz saying that the sceptics made him think of Adolf Hitler. (Can this be the same Martin Shulz who said I should have no home on the European Parliament?)

I’ve always been of the view that references to the Nazi era should be made, as the Common Prayer Book says of marriage, “reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly.” I’ve explained why before in this blog. Even so, I find myself attacked on all sides for making even the most tangential and qualified reference. So why does no one criticise the Watsons and Shulzes who habitually dismiss their opponents as Hitlerite?

Do watch the whole thing.