The Strangers’ Bar in the Houses of Parliament has seen it all before. Last week’s sharp exchange between Labour’s shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, and the Brexit secretary David Davis following the article 50 vote was tame by comparison to the drink-fuelled scuffles that erupt from time to time in the most pub-like of the Palace of Westminster’s nine taxpayer-subsidised bars.
It was here in 2012 in front of a bar selling Carling lager for £3.30 a pint and bags of pork scratchings, that Labour’s Eric Joyce assaulted several Conservative MPs, complaining loudly that the bar “was full of fucking Tories”. He later admitted to police that he was “hammered” and was fined by magistrates.
A former barman, John O’Sullivan, has recalled how MPs would sink bottle after bottle of cheap wine after votes or sometimes waiting for them. Mark Reckless, the Ukip MP, once confessed to being too drunk to vote on the budget after late-night drinking in the Commons bars.
“There was a great cast of characters,” O’Sullivan recalled in 2015. “Kenneth Clarke would be wandering around looking puzzled and wearing a suit ten times too big for him. John Prescott once popped in and when I asked how his day was going he just told me ‘running the country while Tony’s away’. The old Speaker of the House Betty Boothroyd would wander in like Bubbles Devere from Little Britain.”
The Strangers’ Bar is one of the least exclusive of those run by the Palace of Westminster and offers access to all 15,500 parliamentary pass holders as well as MPs and their guests (strangers). Accessed through an easily missed door off the central lobby, it is known for attracting a more Labour than Tory crowd, but far from exclusively.
“It reminds me of a 1970s working men’s club,” said one pass holder. “It’s not much bigger than a front room and it can get very busy, especially after votes.”
Another said he had seen several scuffles between drinkers in the Strangers as the cheap alcohol flowed. Pints of bitter cost just £3.20, much less than elsewhere in the Westminster area.
Not everyone finds it welcoming. Harriet Harman, the former leader of the Labour party, once said that “for decades, I was apprehensive about going into Strangers’ Bar. Either drinking tonic water or leaning on the bar, both would receive disapproval. You were seen as setting yourself apart and looking snooty.”
But she warmed to the place, posing for the cameras pulling a pint of “ginger rodent” ale with Danny Alexander after she had called the Liberal Democrat chief secretary to the Treasury that name in 2010.
The beers on tap are sometimes the subject of parliamentary debate. In 2005 MPs including Nicholas Winterton and Justine Greening tabled an early day motion requesting the return of Youngs Bitter, which had been replaced with San Miguel lager.
It received a £13,000 refit in 2013, again at the taxpayer’s expense.
• This article was amended on 13 February 2017 to update the number of parliamentary pass-holders.
