Britain at its best

Matt in his Sunday Telegraph column sums up perfectly why it was right that PMQs was suspended following Ivan Cameron’s death: 

“This was our unwritten constitution at its very best, as the Commons responded with nimble common sense to a practical dilemma presented by a private tragedy. It would have been grotesque to proceed with Prime Minister’s Questions only a few hours after the death of young son of the Leader of the Opposition.

The properly British solution was not to pore over Erskine May or to fret about setting a precedent, or sliding down a slippery slope. Does anyone seriously believe these extraordinary circumstances are likely to recur? As so often in our institutional history, the right answer was to extemporise judiciously. It is a part of the genius of this nation, our capacity for gentle and dignified improvisation: the seemly ad hoc, so to speak. The Prime Minister and Speaker grasped this immediately, and all credit to them for doing so.