WATCH: Nigel Farage MP and Reform Colleagues Sworn Into Parliament

UK Parliament
Oliver JJ Lane

Formality makes Nigel Farage, Member of Parliament a reality after he won his Clacton seat in last week’s General Election.

Nigel Farage and his four fellow Reform UK election winners took their seats in Britain’s House of Commons, the lower chamber of the nation’s bicameral Parliament, this week. Mr Farage was among the last of the new Members of Parliament to be sworn in on Thursday morning, while Lee Anderson, Richard Tice, Rupert Lowe and James McMurdock were sworn in together on Wednesday afternoon.

While the five, like all members of this new Parliament, won their elections at the General Election last week by convention they are not full MPs until they have sworn an oath to the crown, the conceptualisation of political authority in the British system. The King, in turn, swore to “not to be served but to serve” the British people at his coronation, completing the cycle of modern constitutional monarchy.

If not sworn in, Members of Parliament cannot speak in debates, vote, or draw their salary. Having completed the traditional process, they are said to have claimed their seats. Any MP who attempts to participate in the business of Parliament without being sworn in can be fined and kicked out, their seat put up for a fresh election.

While the swearing-in remains an important part of the process of becoming a Member of Parliament, in practice it has lost almost all of its formality. Members can choose to swear on any holy book or none, and either take an oath or declare a ‘solemn affirmation’ for those with no religious conviction.

The process is so flexible, even those who make clear at the time of their swearing that they hold the process and even the King in contempt are still considered to have done the job and are accepted as Members of Parliament. Labour Member of Parliament Clive Lewis prefaced his comments, for instance, by saying: “I take this oath under protest and in the hope that one day my fellow citizens will democratically decide to live in a republic.”

Another, Social Democratic and Labour Party leader Colum Eastwood said: “I read out this empty formula in order to represent my constituents but it’s under protest… My true allegiance is to the people of Derry and to the people of Ireland”.

Yet other MPs who take not swearing an oath to the Crown extremely seriously — the Sinn Fein Irish republican MPs, for instance — and refuse to do so even with performative expressions of protest, have a long tradition of simply not taking their seats at all, forfeiting their ability to influence national politics by voting on bills and even their MP’s pay.

No such complexities were seen for the Reform MPs this week, though. The five took the most traditional route of swearing their oath on the King James Version Bible (‘KJV’), the 17th century English translation of the Bible that remains an important text in the United Kingdom and throughout the Anglosphere including for Baptists, Pentecostals, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians in the United States.

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