Jess Phillips: This is what I witnessed last night in parliament – it was not OK

It wasn’t a pleasant scene – and not one I have seen in my seven years in Westminster

In the Johnson and Cummings era of government, it was often assumed that anything that happened in Westminster was a group of political geniuses playing 3D chess and laying traps for the Labour Party (or opponents from within the government) to fall in to.

It did sometimes feel true, although it was my experience that it was more by accident than design. I think it might be fair to say that they were playing 2D chess with quite some skill – until they weren’t. Liz Truss, it would seem, cannot even play 1D chess. In fact, I am not sure her particular operation could be compared to the shape-sorting toys a one-year-old can master.

Nobody forced the government this week to declare that a vote on a debate on fracking should be a confidence vote. It was a debate about fracking – for or against. The Labour Party doesn’t agree with fracking. We think it is dangerous and unlikely to yield any kind of energy or economic security for the country. I wouldn’t want it in my backyard – and I don’t want it in yours.

It would have been perfectly normal (if not a little cowardly) for the government and their whips to simply allow their MPs who are against fracking to back quietly away from Westminster yesterday.

It would still have been awkward for the many Tory MPs who are against fracking, but on a day when the home secretary had resigned and the PM was clearly in chaos, it would have likely gone largely unnoticed.

But instead, the government decided to make it into a massive issue by declaring it a motion of confidence in the government – and threatening to discipline anyone who voted against it. To return to the analogy, the PM – for some unthinkable reason – decided to try and ram a square peg into a round hole.

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What I saw last night in parliament was not OK. It is not for me to say what individuals can tolerate or if they perceive themselves as harassed or bullied. So I won’t. What I can say is what I will or won’t tolerate.

I saw the MP Alex Stafford – and some others who were reluctant to vote with their own government – being strongarmed into the lobby. Confusion reigned about whether they would lose the whip if they voted with their conscience; whether they would be punished.

I saw and heard MPs shouting and swearing, asking where the chief whip was and pleading with raised voices, “is it a confidence motion on not?”

I saw a man who did not want to walk through a lobby be kettled in a crowd and walked through. The commotion lasted about five full minutes. Stafford really didn’t want to go through, so myself and a colleague from the SNP told him to vote with his conscience. He seemed tortured.

The response I got from one MP who was directly in Stafford’s face was to turn to me and yell – as if we were in a pub brawl – that I should “shut up”. It wasn’t a pleasant scene – and not one I have seen in my seven years in Westminster (and please bear in mind, we have lived through some hideous and contentious votes). I wouldn’t have tolerated being treated like this.

The scenes, however, were not the root of the problem. What was happening was a government in total freefall, with no one knowing what was going on.

The simple question was whether they wanted fracking or not. There was no need for chaos, tears, shouting and accusations. Tories lined up to claim the Labour Party was playing politics, which is a weird accusation to a group of politicians who were trying to assert their political opinions about an issue of the day.

Yes, it is uncomfortable for the government to have to force their MPs to vote against their manifesto pledges, but do they expect Labour to just sit back and provide them with fluffy cushions to sit on when they are doing things we don’t like? The only person “playing politics” was the PM. She foolishly made the vote into an issue about her, rather than the country.

This is the government’s main problem at the moment: they are so obsessed with their own party management, that they seem to have forgotten that they are responsible for the governance of the environment, the NHS, the police and the economy, too.

They are inward-looking, while everyone in the country – indeed, every service in the country – suffers. They are incapable of doing their jobs, yet they are making decisions, minute by minute, about how to stay in power. They appear to have completely forgotten that the reason they hold that power in the first place is supposed to be for the betterment of the people and the planet.

Yet the Tories keep asserting that the last thing anyone needs or wants is a general election. Again, this is a weird assertion that bears no resemblance to a single conversation I have had with any member of the public.

As I boarded the train after the fracas, members of the public quite literally volunteered how much they wanted an election. “Get them out, Jess,” was the common refrain.

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How on earth can there be any alternative to letting the people decide now what they want from government? When it’s so blindingly obvious that no matter which turn the Conservatives make, they are only thinking of themselves? It doesn’t really matter who they get to take over from Truss – the damage is done. They are at war with themselves.

If I were to be generous, I would say they need putting out of their misery. If I were to be honest, I would say that the people in our country are the ones whose misery we should be concerned with.

The Conservative Party no longer governs – it shouts and screams like a toddler in a tantrum. It needs to be taken out of the classroom, have some “time out” in a quiet room and given the space to learn which shapes go in which holes again.