'When the hedgehog travels furtively on the lawn'

A speech about hedgehogs. The speaker paused at the end of it saying she wanted more applause for one of the best speeches she'd heard in the Commons.

I was going to post something something rousing or inspirational — something to set the hairs on the back of the neck a-bristle and to steel lovers of speeches and democracy for years of resistance. I was tossing up between Allende’s ‘The great avenues will open again!’ and Winston Churchill’s ‘Be Ye Men of Valour’.

But then I saw it was the 9th anniversary of the greatest speech in human history about hedgehogs, and given I’m adopting an ostrich approach to the news of this week, wondered if this might be the go?

Rory Stewart is a former Conservative MP for Penrith and the Border in the UK, and is now part of the ‘Rest is Politics’ podcast team with former Labour Communications director, Alastair Campbell. He’s also a bestselling author whose book about walking across Afghanistan in 2000 made the New York Times bestseller list. He’s a master wordsmith, a rare pollie with a sense of humour, who hosted the BBC Radio 4 Podcast The Long History Of Argument in which he discussed the history of debates.

He’d be such a great guest on Speakola podcast — which I will be resuming soon now that my ‘Ange & The Boss - Puskas in Australia’ film is finished and screening. (We were expanded from two screenings at Greek Film Festival in Melbourne and Sydney to eight! Seven were sold out, including the final encore screening tonight). We sold out the 1000 seat Astor theatre in Melbourne for the first time in five years and were the best attended film at the festival. Sign up here to find out about future screenings.

But back to hedghogs. Full transcript below for paid subs. Others can track it down in the Speakola speech library.

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Rory Stewart MP: 'I believe that this is the first time that Parliament has discussed hedgehogs since 1566', House of Commons - 2015

10 November 2015, House of Commons, Westminster, London, United Kingdom

This speech was part of a debate in the House of Commons over hedgehog conservation and whether it should become England's national symbol in order to raise awareness for its endangerment.

Rory Stewart: Multa novit vulpes, verum echinus unum magnum, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Tom Tugendhat: (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con): In every happy home is a hedgehog, as the Pashtuns would say. I urge my hon. Friend to encourage our Pashtun community in this country to follow that example.

Rory Stewart: I am very grateful for that Pushtun intervention, but my hon. Friend refers, of course, to the Asian variety of the hedgehog rather than the western hedgehog, which is the subject of our discussion today.

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

I am extremely pleased to have the opportunity to respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile). I believe that this is the first time that Parliament has discussed hedgehogs since 1566, when the subject was famously raised in relation to the attribution of a bounty of tuppence for the collection of the hedgehog throughout the United Kingdom.

The hedgehog has undergone an extraordinary evolution. The year 1566 seems very recent, but the hedgehog was around before then. It was around before this Parliament. The hedgehog, and its ancestor, narrowly missed being crushed under the foot of Tyrannosaurus rex. The hedgehog was around long before the human species: it existed 56 million years ago. It tells us a great deal about British civilisation that my hon. Friend has raised the subject, because the hedgehog is a magical creature. It is a creature that appears on cylinder seals in Sumeria, bent backwards on the prows of Egyptian ships. The hedgehog has of course a famous medicinal quality taken by the Romany people for baldness and it represents a symbol of the resurrection found throughout Christian Europe.

This strange animal was known, of course, in Scotland, Wales and Ireland originally in Gaelic as that demonic creature, that horrid creature, and is the hedgehog celebrated by Shakespeare:

“Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen…

Come not near our faerie queen”,

and famously of course in “Richard III” there is that great moment when Gloucester is referred to as a hedgehog. It tells us something about Britain today; it represents a strange decline in British civilisation from a notion of this magical, mystical, terrifying creature to where it is today, and I refer of course to my own constituent, the famous cleanliness representative of Penrith and The Border, Mrs Tiggy-Winkle.