WHILE debate raged in Parliament tonight over a Bill to stop a no-deal Brexit, campaigners gathered outside Newport’s Westgate Hotel to protest Government plans to prorogue it.

Around 150 people turned up at the hotel for a demonstration organised by the group Gwent For Europe, under the banner ‘save our democracy’.

South Wales Argus:

Protesters at the Gwent For Europe demonstration in Newport

MPs were engaged in passionate debate in a chamber set to fall silent for five weeks under Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s prorogation plan.

And 140 miles away from London, protesters - fewer perhaps than organisers would have liked - were passionate too that the proposal is an affront to democracy and must be stopped.

Given the location, inevitable parallels were drawn between the anti-prorogation campaign and the Chartists’ fight for democracy which in Newport resulted in the killings outside the Westgate 180 years ago.

Newport city councillor Gail Giles told those who attended tonight’s demonstration that she believes democracy is currently “under the greatest threat since the time of the Chartists”.

South Wales Argus:

Steve Cocks (above), co-ordinator for Gwent For Europe, said Parliament has always been a focus at times of of national crisis, “but never did I expect a Government in the middle of a national crisis to close down Parliament”.

He said the Government is demonstrating a “seething contempt” for those who disagree with it.

A couple of passing pro-Brexit supporters voiced their determination that the process be completed, deal or no deal.

“I want out of the corrupt Brussels regime.” shouted one.

During these exchanges, there was anger in the air, the deep rift the issue of Brexit has caused among supporters and detractors across the UK, played out in miniature.

There was anger aplenty in the air too, in the House of Commons. Those attending this arena were far more finely balanced in terms of views than those who gathered outside the Westgate, but no less impassioned.

Arch Brexiteer and Leader of the House Jacob Rees-Mogg said a Bill that aimed to block a no-deal Brexit was “constitutionally irregular” and sought “to confound the referendum result”.

From about as far across the political divide from Mr Rees-Mogg as it is possible to travel, Scottish Nationalist MP Iain Blackford called the prorogation plan “an outrageous assault on basic democratic values”.

Writ large in Parliament, and on a smaller but no less relevant scale in Newport, tonight, were the fault lines that are scarring Britain.