By Martin Walker
The shamed Labour MP who assaulted Sedgefield MP Phil Wilson escaped jail, but was barred from pubs for three months.
MP for Falkirk Eric Joyce was given a 12-month community order after admitting assault during a brawl last month.
The 51-year-old assaulted four people in House of Commons bar Strangers on February 22, including our MP Mr Wilson, when eyewitnesses said he “flipped”.
Joyce was given a community order for 12 months and banned from any bar for three months, as well as being ordered to pay £3,000 in costs and £1,400 to his victims.
Earlier at Westminster Magistrates Court he had admitted common assault on Conservative MP Stuart Andrew and Tory councillors Luke Mackenzie and Ben Maney.
Joyce also admitted the more serious charge of common assault by beating Labour whip Mr Wilson.
Mr Andrew, MP for Pudsey, West Yorkshire, was left bleeding from the nose after being headbutted, while Joyce also lashed out at Mr Maney, councillor on Thurrock Council and a guest of the constituency’s MP Jackie Doyle-Price, and Mr Mackenzie, a councillor on Basildon Council and aide to South Basildon MP Stephen Metcalfe.
Mr Wilson, Labour MP for Sedgefield, was assaulted after attempting to intervene.
Joyce was heard to shout “there are too many f****** Tories in here” before laying into his victims, with his barrister Jeremy Dein QC saying he felt “shame and embarrassment” over his actions.
“He is unreservedly apologetic for what occurred on the night in question,” Mr Dein said.
Prosecutor Zoe Martin told the court he called officers “c****” after they arrived to arrest him, and that he also wrote in a police officer’s notebook: “We are a Tory nation, that cannot be forever… good cops unite.”
An onlooker said the MP “looked like nobody was home”, while another said his eyes “looked dead”.
Joyce was suspended by Labour after the incident pending the result of the police investigation, with the party branding the claims “extremely serious”.
Former Army Education Corps officer Joyce said he would remain as an MP until the next election.
“I won’t be standing at the next general election but until then I will carry on doing for my constituents what I do at the moment,” he recently told the Daily Record.
“What hasn’t been written about is that every year thousands of people come through my constituency office looking for help.
“That flow has continued as normal in the last couple of weeks and I wouldn’t expect that to change.”