MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle Grabbing British Parliament Mace

About

MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle Grabbing British Parliament Mace refers to a viral video of English Labour Party MP (member of Parliment) Lloyd Russell-Moyle picking up The Mace, a symbol of royal authority needed for both houses of British Parliament to pass laws. Russell-Moyle took The Mace, which looks like a large, golden club, from its holder and attempted leave Parliament to the dismay of fellow members. Online, the video inspired jokes and memes about English government and Brexit.

Origin

On December 10th, 2018, during a session of Parliament, Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle picked up the Mace and walked it over "the line" toward other MPs as members of the opposition party, the Torys, shouted at Russell-Moyle to put it back.^[1]

That day, BBC journalist @dcakraemer posted the video (shown below).^[2] The tweet received more than 2,400 retweets, 6,900 likes and 4 million views in 24 hours.

Here is @lloyd_rm grabbing the mace just now pic.twitter.com/SEUEWz5w3F

— Daniel Kraemer (@dcakraemer) December 10, 2018

Spread

Following the video, many mocked the British government and their traditions. Twitter^[3] user @JimMFelton retweeted the video and added the comment "Britain to the world: We are a noble, respected and extremely advanced democracy Also Britain: Oh, it’s all kicking off now, they’ve grabbed the big mace!" The tweet received more than 2,900 retweets and 10,000 likes in 24 hours (shown below, left).

Throughout the day, people continued to make jokes about the grab (examples below, center and right).

That day, Mashable ^[4] published an article about the Mace.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References