To be fair, the guy on the receiving end of these legislative punches did approach Labour MP Mike Amesbury on the street at 2 a.m., which is an odd time and place to complain about a bridge closure. But Labour Party officials, and a judge, still seemed to think he had overreacted.
While the report doesn’t give many details, it says Amesbury initially claimed he felt threatened when the man approached him. And that is consistent with what Amesbury reportedly said after knocking him down and punching him five times as he lay there: “You won’t threaten your MP again, will you? You f*#@ing soft lad.” But Judge Tan Ikram called the punching “unprovoked drunken behavior,” emphasis added, and Amesbury decided to plead guilty, so that suggests the facts didn’t fully support a self-defense claim.
Amesbury is the MP for Runcorn and Helsby, which I know sounds like a couple of minor Hogwarts professors but is actually a district in northwest England, near Liverpool. Amesbury had apparently been out drinking somewhere in the district, and as it turned out the soft lad he punched was one of his own constituents and not just some tourist complaining about a random bridge.
So what happens if a legislator punches a constitutent? In the U.S., who knows these days—it’d likely depend on the party affiliations of the puncher and punchee—but this still seems to be generally frowned upon in the United Kingdom. The judge sentenced Amesbury to 10 weeks in prison for assault, although the prison term has since been suspended in favor of 200 hours of community service. But the Labour Party immediately suspended him from … whatever it is he does as a member of the Labour Party, which makes a lot of sense assuming you think it doesn’t look too good for representatives to be beating up their own constituents (or voters in general, really).
And because the sentence was “custodial” (even though suspended), under the Recall of MPs Act 2015 it triggers a recall petition. According to the BBC, it takes signatures from only 10% of the electorate to recall the convict and schedule a by-election. Amesbury was elected with 52.9% of the vote, but the two conservative parties got 34% between them, so it looks like Amesbury will be departing soon.
On the other hand, no law prohibits him running for the same seat in the by-election, so maybe he’ll be back soon too.
In my view this legal process compares favorably with what happens in this country (or what used to happen, anyway) when a member of Congress is convicted of a felony: nothing. See “Can a Convicted Felon Serve in Congress?” (Dec. 24, 2014). That is, there is no constitutional or legal provision that prohibits a convicted felon from retaining his or her seat, even if the actual physical seat where they’ll be sitting is in a prison. This is addressed only by House or Senate rules, and those are … less than draconian. It takes a two-thirds vote to expel a member—so that’s probably not going to happen—and House Rule XXIII(10), for example, merely suggests that the felon should “refrain from participation” in committee business or voting. In practice, the parties almost always pressure felons to resign, and they usually do. But there is nothing like the automatic recall petition procedure they have in the UK.
There are regularly scheduled elections, of course, at least for now, and no prohibition on running for the same seat you may have been forced to abandon. Or a higher office, of course. If a felon could get himself or herself elected President, they’d be all set. Not that it would ever happen.