Strangers' Bar: The Commons venue that changed political history It's a bar that has changed the course of political history.
"If I'm to commit political suicide, I need a drink first," said a clubbable and extrovert Tory MP Barry Porter that night, convinced that he had signed his political death warrant.
In 1990, on the day of the first ballot in the Tory leadership election, Conservative MPs who had steadfastly supported Margaret Thatcher for more than a decade gathered in Strangers' Bar at 11am.
Falkirk MP Eric Joyce, who witnesses said was angry and drunk, started a brawl which led to him being convicted of assaulting two MPs and two Conservative councillors, shortly before closing time.
More than a decade later, in 2012, it was the history of the Labour Party that was changed dramatically by a night of mayhem in Strangers' Bar.
