Watch: Scots MPs whistle Beethoven during Brexit vote

Watch: Scots MPs whistle Beethoven during Brexit vote

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norman lebrecht

February 09, 2017

MPs of the Scottish National Party were rebuked by the Deputy Speaker last night for whistling and singing the Ode to Joy during the vote to permit the UK Government to trigger Article 50.

One reason given by the Deputy Speaker was that ‘some of them haven’t quite got the voice’ for it. Actually, they were doing quite well. Oh, F-f-f-freude….

 

Comments

  • John says:

    Actually the Deputy Speaker is indicating that he thinks that some on the government benches wouldn’t have the voices for a sing-off! He’s not criticising the vocal abilities of the SNP!!

  • MWnyc says:

    Worth mentioning here that the Ode to Joy is the official anthem of the European Union, so the performance of it by SNP MPs during the Brexit/Article 50 vote was a political statement. (Didn’t the MPs from Northern Ireland join in?)

    So I wonder if Labour members of the Scottish Parliament will start singing “God Save the Queen” while their SNP colleagues in Edinburgh vote to hold another independence referendum.

    • Anonymous says:

      Except that there is a Union of the Crowns, which has existed since the ascension of James VI of Scotland to the throne of England in 1603, so it would be no political statement at all.

  • Ed Clement says:

    Whistling and humming, no doubt because they didn’t know the (German) words…

    • Alexander Prior says:

      Angus Robertson, for example, is a fluent German speaker. And did you know Alex Salmond was a boy soprano?
      Probably some didn’t know the words, almost certainly, but I still find it a beautiful gesture. It’s the EU hymn but it’s also a message of solidarity for peoples of the the world, everything the SNP stands for.

      • Ed Clement says:

        The Scottish National Party is, by definition, the equivalent of the Front National in France, and other parties generally described as right wing. Schiller’s ‘An die Freude’, which its author later disowned, is hardly an appropriate anthem for the SNP.

        • Alexander Prior says:

          Are you sure about that? A party that stands for internationalism, for inclusion and equality, equality of opportunity, passionately pro-democracy, and indeed working against the nastiness of insular, nationalist, protectionist, isolationist policy is somehow far right? Don’t think so pal.
          You may well dislike the party as is anyone’s right, I have no criticism of that at all, but to compare it to those that you compared it to is cheap and banal, – and shows you haven’t actually researched it. To call the SNP far-right is to say 2+2=3. Simply false.

  • DESR says:

    They can go whistle for it…

  • matteo says:

    Ahahahahah!!!
    They lost.

    • A P says:

      Assuming you’re right – the question does come up: is it your usual style to laugh at someone’s loss?
      Of course you will already know that the MPs involved won the EU referendum for the Remain side in their country by a far larger margin than English and Welsh brexiteers did in theirs.

  • AP says:

    Assuming you’re right – the question does come up: is it your usual style to laugh at someone’s loss?
    Of course you will already know that the MPs involved won the EU referendum for the Remain side in their country by a far larger margin than English and Welsh brexiteers did in theirs.

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