LIVELY debate can be a great thing – just watch an edition of the BBC’s Question Time to see how it can often spark otherwise dreary-seeming matters to unexpected life and help us see key issues from different perspectives.

But lively debate is one thing – acting like jeering morons that give football yobs a bad name is quite another.

Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow has written to the heads of the major parties, calling for them to clamp down on the behaviour of MPs in the House of Commons for fear that it was putting off the public.

“Public school twittishness” was how The Speaker described the worst of it to The Independent.

And he makes a good point – watching the Commons in action is astonishing stuff. Yes, there is some entertainment value to be had in seeing supposed grown-ups acting like schoolchildren running amok after quaffing down too many packs of Smarties.

But on another level, it is pretty alarming and raises serious questions. Are these really the people we have voted into office? Do they really control the fate of the country?

Just how long do they spend practicing those jeers and whoops to perfect the tone of all that obnoxious squawking?

The Speaker himself takes pot shots at the offending MPs but at least they have some wit about them.

‘Take up yoga’, he recently told one who was getting a tad carried away.

Research from The Hansard Society, which strives to improve parliament and promote democracy, found members of the public frequently describe Prime Minister’s Questions as ‘over the top’ and ‘childish’, and that it puts them off politics.

Again, lively, smart discourse with real points to make is a thing to be applauded.

Sadly, more often the quality of Commons debate seems little more sophisticated than ‘liar, liar, pants-on-fire’.

Actually, that rhymes, so it would probably mark a step up.

I know there is a tradition of our MPs behaving in this way, and that, yes, it probably marks our democracy in action and parliamentary drama and all that.

But we also have a tradition of burning witches at the stake and we knocked that one on the head.

Why can’t parliamentary drama be smart and actually dramatic so that it has the heady aspiration of earning the public’s interest?

Instead it seems content to be stupid, cringe-worthy, and happy to leave us all rolling our eyeballs in sheer apathy.