The Spectator’s Notes | 21 March 2019

Angela Merkel says disdainfully, ‘I admit I was not on top of the British parliament’s 17th-century procedural rules.’ Her implication is that they are absurdly out of date. Yet the old rule invoked by Mr Speaker Bercow is surely one that can hold up its head in the 21st century. It is that the executive should not keep putting the same question to parliament until it gets its way. Therefore Mrs May cannot just keep reheating her terrible withdrawal deal. If there were no such rule, there would be no end to the bullying. Isn’t there something quite impressive about the fact that we have an elected assembly which had already thought of this more than 400 years ago? Habeas corpus is a pretty old idea too, and jury trial is even older. Does Mrs Merkel mock them? In 1604, the date of the rule on which Mr Bercow drew, the area we now call Germany was a chaotic collection of duchies and princely states just gearing up for the Thirty Years’ War which wiped out more than a quarter of the population, whereas England was England.