What was so amazing about the invasion of the Commons? Nothing

What guff people do talk. To read the hysterical press which greeted last week’s pitch-invasion in the Palace of Westminster you would have thought the unguarded nature of the Commons Chamber was news to anybody. You would have thought the pro-hunt protesters had found a loophole which nobody had thought of. You would have thought something had been learnt. What next? A bomb on the London Underground, followed by a scandalised Fleet Street wail that Tube bosses have been ‘caught napping’ in their failure to frisk and X-ray a million commuters and all our bags twice a day?

Intelligent lobby correspondents — mature men and women, journalists who have grown grey in the service of parliamentary reporting — penned breathless columns expressing their outrage at the supposedly astonishing scenes. Apparently we were all aghast. Yet any one of us could at any time in the last few decades have described in every detail the possibility which last week, years later than I always expected, became a reality. For Pete’s sake, traumatised editorialisers, have you never visited the Commons? Had you never noticed that one can see straight into the Chamber from the Central Lobby when the doors are open; and it cannot be more than 50 yards?

It was sweet of the protesters to take the elaborate precaution of dressing as builders and weaving in via a side door, but unnecessary. Between the Central Lobby (to which any member of the public has access from the street) and the Floor of the House stand no more than a couple of Badge Messengers and a constable or two. If a group of demonstrators surged forward, then many would make it.

It was equally sweet of the commentators to speculate on how the protesters had learnt the layout of corridors; there was excited talk of ‘insider’ information.