Handforth residents, a comedian and young political activists helped explosive parish council meeting go viral

t was the distraction the nation didn’t know it needed: a poor-quality recording of an online meeting of a Cheshire parish council, called by two councillors “following the refusal of the council chairman to call such a meeting”.

Normally such a congress would struggle to raise a quorum, let alone an audience of millions. Yet against all odds, December’s Extraordinary Meeting of Handforth parish council’s planning and environment committee went viral on Thursday night.

It made a star of its doughty clerk, Jackie Weaver, who dealt with argumentative male councillors by kicking them off the Zoom call and barely blinking when being yelled at to “read the standing orders! Read them and understand them!”

She kept her cool when one man dismissed her by saying “you don’t know what you’re talking about” and ignored the gales of laughter from the remaining men when a female councillor asked them to show Weaver some respect (she soon got her revenge with another remorseless click of her eviction button).[…]

More: ‘Good on her’: how Jackie Weaver became an internet star