A Tory MP who objected to pardoning Alan Turing just blocked the upskirting bill in one of the most revolting moves in modern politics

Filibustering out legislation and debasing the political life of the nation into a spectacle that makes the ordinary member of the public want to gag is not a joke

British politics is in the grip of one of its most serious crises. Politics and politicians of all parties and all persuasions have never been so profoundly loathed. The public contempt for them is at a level that has not been known in long decades. It may even be entirely without precedent.

So when the MP for Shipley, Philip Davies, a man whose political career thus far appears to have been principally to lobby for the interests of the gambling industry in which he used to work, speaks unrelenting garbage in the House of Commons for two hours in order to kill off the time that would be required to pass a law banning “upskirting”, he should be under no illusion about the seriousness of what he is doing.

Nor should Christopher Chope, the MP for Christchurch who ultimately killed off the “Upskirting Bill”. It was gone 2.30pm by the time Sir Christopher Chope raised an objection to it. His was the only objection, but he knows that after 2.30pm, when the House will sit for only 30 minutes more, a solitary objection is enough.

High above the House of Commons is a large public gallery. But for some necessary security arrangements, any member of the public can go and sit in there, almost whenever he or she chooses. They can do so without telling anybody why, and without even giving their name.

The same rule applies in any court in the land. These rules exist because justice and democracy alike need to both be done and be seen to be done.

If the public cannot engage with the political process, democracy suffers. So when Davies, Chope and others engage in these kinds of practices, they should think hard about the damage they are doing. Debasing the political life of the nation into a spectacle that makes the ordinary member of the public want to gag is not a joke.

Pressed on this question, in the past Davies has been known to make some vague attempt at the argument that the bills he regularly filibusters out are private members’ bills. They are laws introduced by backbenchers, not governments. The ones that are chosen are chosen almost at random (some private members’ bills are introduced, quite literally, by a lucky dip). And so it is through an objection to this seemingly random allocation of the right to make a law that Davies and others make their principled stand.

But it gives them a truly bizarre power in the life of the nation. It is they, by no greater virtue than being prepared to stand and talk for hours roughly once a month on a Friday, rather than return to their constituencies, who have become the gatekeepers as to what private members’ bills can pass and what cannot.

And it is here that their principled objections start to look problematic. Among those that have been filibustered or otherwise blocked by Christopher Chope since 2013 include scrapping hospital parking charges for carers. He also objected to a bill to formally pardon the Second World War code breaker Alan Turing of his “indecency” conviction for the so-called crime of being gay.

In the 2015-16 session however, six private members’ bills did make it past the objections of Davies, Hope and the rest. The Riot Compensation Act, the Driving Instructors Registration Act, and one that particularly stands out, the House of Commons (Members Fund) Act 2016, which safeguarded a pot of public money to be paid to ex-MPs.

Away from the tricky constitutional issue of private members’ legislation however, I happen to recall a recent interjection from Sir Christopher at a hearing of the Home Affairs Select Committee. Executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google were giving evidence, and Sir Christopher was furious that Twitter had not done more to remove a Sir Christopher Chope parody account. This was, apparently, a disgrace.

And yet, on this evidence, the secretive taking of photographs up women’s skirts is an outrage with which Sir Christopher’s objections are much less severe.

I also recall an incident in 2010, when now completed plans were underway to replace a bar on the parliamentary estate that was popular with Conservative MPs and their staff, with a creche.

The campaign against it, led by Sir Christopher, was unsuccessful. Alas the same cannot be said for his contribution to the Voyeurism (Offences) Bill.