Forget Tea Parties: Irate Brits Talking 'Bout a Revolution

Decades-long tensions come to the fore over latest scandal
By Wesley Oliver,  Newser Staff
Posted May 24, 2009 12:48 PM CDT
Forget Tea Parties: Irate Brits Talking 'Bout a Revolution
The Speaker of Britain's House of Commons Michael Martin announces his resignation to MPs in the House of Commons at Westminster.   (AP Photo/PA Wire)

Britain’s embattled politicians may have another revolution on their hands, but this time one that’s brewing on their own soil. Citizens are fuming over outrageous personal expenditures—including a miniature “duck house” and the clearing of a moat—by members of Parliament, but tensions have been simmering for well over 30 years, John Burns writes in the New York Times.

Brits have often dismissed American politics as a circus, but now the mother country is home to the greatest political show on earth, with critics deriding the entrenchment of “parliamentary dictatorship” and clubby “sofa government.” Prime Minister Gordon Brown has vowed the spend-happy MPs “will pay a very heavy price.” Concludes Burns, “By all appearances, British voters will accept nothing less.”
(More Britain stories.)

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