Could Canadian-style Parliament shooting happen at Westminster?

Our Parliament is ready for anything.

After the events in Canada last week an inevitable jumpiness ensued in Westminster. It was only just perceptible, but it was there.

For the Canadian Parliament is closely modelled on Westminster, right down to the layout of the chamber and indeed the title of the chap in charge of security the Serjeant at Arms.

The parallels between the two parliaments meant that after a terrorist with a gun stormed the Canadian Parliament building, inevitably the question was asked could the same happen here?

The answer is most likely no.

For all the jokes about our Serjeant at Arms carrying just a ceremonial sword while the Canadian version shot down the Ottawa intruder, there is no shortage of serious weaponry on site in Westminster.

Until the SNP decided Hamish Macbeth should pack heat and Taggart should take up target practice by routinely sending armed Scots cops on patrol a decision recently partially reversed Westminster was really the only place in the UK where police carried weapons quite so visibly.

Those who work there regularly get blas about officers carrying sub-machine guns, and it’s a useful corrective to bring a visitor into Parliament and note their reaction to the deadly force on show.

It’s also a good week to state with some confidence that Parliament’s security measures work because, just hours before the awful events in Ottowa, they were tested.

During a dire Prime Minister’s Questions, a loud crack was heard and the eyes of MPs and journalists alike that had been glazing over as David Cameron and Ed Miliband shouted at each other suddenly switched to the public gallery.

A man there had had enough and threw a bag of marbles towards the MPs. The sort of man who routinely strolls around town with a bag of marbles in his pocket is the sort of man who ends his protest shouting: “I’m an Englishman, you’re all idiots!”

As if the two are mutually exclusive.

It’s also the sort of man who forgets that after the last time someone launched a projectile at the PM Fathers 4 Justice, remember them, pelting Tony Blair with purple powder? a thick security screen was installed in front of the public gallery.

Consequently, this ineffectual intruder lost his marbles as they bounced back off the glass and his angry words went unheard in the chamber as he was shepherded away by the stewards dressed in tights and tails.

Their uniform may not have changed in centuries but their reactions were significantly sharper than their dress.

And for all we may mock and deride our politicians, when it comes down to it we want them protected properly so they can have their say no matter how stupid it may be.

For example, Tory backbencher Philip Davies last week caught the eye with a speech against compulsory sex education in schools that referenced doughnuts and the idea that teenage pregnancies can be tackled by Italian families that eat together.

It was a poor contribution. With most of the effective politicians despatched to Rochester and Strood in an attempt to defeat Ukip there at the forthcoming by-election, the parties’ dregs effectively have free reign of the chamber.

And incidentally it wasn’t the nadir of Davies’ week.

That came on a tour of the ITN newsroom in his capacity as a member of the Culture select committee when he allegedly got in a spat with veteran broadcaster Jon Snow and the pair had to be separated by Snow’s fellow newsreader Krishnan Guru-Murthy.

We may despair that doughnuts like Davies get elected but we should give thanks that once they’ve earned the democratic right, all MPs can be heard without being bombarded with marbles, or as so nearly happened in Canada, something worse.