Mother of Parliaments

noun

1. the Mother of Parliaments
   the British Parliament: the model and creator of many other Parliaments

Word History and Origins

Origin of Mother of Parliaments¹

C19: first used of England in 1865 by John Bright (1811–89), British Liberal statesman

Example Sentences

But Tory peer Lord Tugendhat, whose nephew is security minister Tom Tugendhat, said: "What we are being asked to do really represents the sort of behaviour that the world associates with despots and autocracies, not with an established democracy, not with the mother of Parliaments."

From BBC

That is a democratic deficit which the mother of parliaments should be deeply ashamed of and which, as you and I know, is the result of the machinations of a small group of individuals embedded deep at the centre of the party and Downing Street.

From BBC

"Whatever emerges in the next week, the mother of parliaments has been reduced to a bad joke, its constitution a laughing stock," it said, later adding: "A prime minister is normally supposed to stand for something. Truss in Downing Street today stood for nothing."

From BBC

“It would have been an insult to Parliament and to the principle of free speech upon which democracies are founded if the official representative of a regime which had just banned Parliamentarians from entering Chinese territory because they had stood up in the House of Commons to call out China’s appalling human rights abuses was allowed to set foot in the Mother of Parliaments which cherishes those freedoms,” the three lawmakers wrote.

From Washington Post

The ceremonial start of debate at the mother of parliaments was still surrounded by pomp, though the event was pared down, in keeping with ongoing restrictions to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

From Washington Post