Ukip's deputy leader Paul Nuttall got told to shut up in the European parliament on Tuesday, because he kept comparing the outgoing president of the European Council to Saddam Hussein's propaganda chief.
Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf achieved world wide fame at the time of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq while serving as Saddam's information minister. He was nicknamed 'Comical Ali' for his denial that American troops were quickly overrunning Iraqi forces.
Nuttall, an MEP for the North West England, said the Iraqi minister "was delusional to the point of denial". He told Herman Van Rompuy, to his face, that Europeans had "witnessed something similar from you".
The comparison did not go down well. Martin Schulz, the president of the European parliament, said it was "beyond the bounds of what is acceptable as parliamentary discussion".
"You can not compare the president European Council to the propaganda minister of a brutal dictatorship," he insisted. "Please can I ask you to keep quiet. Otherwise I will be obliged, as president of parliament, to impose penalties."
Nuttall added that as president of the Council, Van Rompuy had "helped destroy democracy in Greece and Italy" by "removing elected prime ministers" and replacing them with "puppets" of the EU Commission.