There was shouting, lewd language and more boisterous behaviour than a rugby club on a Saturday night: a scene of such squabbling it was like the Bash Street Kids rather than a meeting of upstanding members of a local community.
We may think of parish councillors as benign folk concerned with little more than the sprawling wisteria on the village church. Worlds apart, in other words, from the vicious bear pit of Westminster politics.
How wrong we were.
This week, that gentle image of parochial life was spectacularly torpedoed after a video emerged of an extraordinary — in every sense — meeting held by Handforth Parish Council in Cheshire, showing a seemingly mild-mannered group of parishioners behaving like power-crazed characters from Game Of Thrones.
A spoof movie poster was drawn up and shared on social media as the parish council meeting became an internet sensation
The meeting, which took place on a Zoom video-conference back in December, was posted online on Thursday by a Labour activist and swiftly morphed into a global sensation, clocking up millions of views.
Within hours, the internet was ablaze with comments from users enthralled by the melee in the affluent town north of Cheshire’s famous ‘Golden Triangle’, popular with Premier League footballers.
The fracas attracted the attention of former Chancellor George Osborne, who said: ‘I don’t remember Handforth parish council being quite so lively when I was the MP there.’
Olympic gold medallist cyclist Sir Chris Hoy captured the unexpected entertainment value by remarking: ‘Who needs Netflix?’
So what exactly was happening? The row started several months ago between two warring camps within the parish council, with four on one side and three on the other.
‘If you disrupt this meeting, I will have to remove you!’ Jackie Weaver (pictured) said in the meeting
One councillor, Jean Thompson, was dismissed as she did not attend meetings for six months. This left the council split, with…
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