Regardless of his intentions, Sir Lindsay Hoyle’s grievous ruling has shaken the foundations of our democracy
Source - Daily Telegraph - 22/02/24
Whether Sir Lindsay Hoyle can survive as Commons Speaker will depend largely on the extent to which he is now viewed as a Labour Speaker.
That label did not provoke much difficulty for Sir Lindsay’s predecessor in the chair, John Bercow, who compounded his blatant bias towards the official opposition with an unambiguous opposition to Brexit and to Donald Trump. That was enough to keep any challenge at bay, even after Bercow had outstayed his welcome by serving far longer than the period he had promised when he first stood as Speaker in 2009.
The fact remains that on this occasion, Sir Lindsay has been convicted, by his own apology, of making the wrong ruling yesterday, and it can hardly be denied that it was both unprecedented and a huge relief for the Labour Party.
To cut a very long and process-driven story short, House of Commons convention dictates that during an Opposition Day debate, when one of the smaller parties gets a chance to set the topic of the day, the only amendment chosen for debate and vote is that of the government. If the Labour opposition were permitted to submit their own amendment, then the whole debate might as well be handed over to them. This is especially true if, as happened yesterday, MPs are invited to vote on the Labour amendment before the SNP motion.
I rarely have sympathy with the nationalists, but yesterday their grievance was entirely justified. The situation today is not just precarious for Sir Lindsay, however; it is just as dangerous for Keir Starmer.
As has been pointed out by senior Labour spokespeople, it is entirely acceptable for party leaders to lobby the Speaker in favour of this or that ruling. And it is not denied that yesterday, before the Speaker made his controversial – and now widely recognised as wrong – ruling on which amendments were to be debated, the Labour leader lobbied him to seek preference for his party’s motion.
Neither can it be denied that Starmer was hoping that a favourable ruling would allow his MPs to escape the cunning trap set by the SNP, which had been making great play of Labour’s reluctance to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and is hoping to retain most of the Muslim vote in Scotland as a result.
But reports suggest that, rather than admit that this was his fear, Starmer instead played the “intimidation” card. With two MPs murdered by extremists in the last decade, the heightened atmosphere and anger surrounding the conflict between Israel and Hamas was putting MPs’ very lives at stake. Allowing the Labour motion to be called would mean Starmer’s troops could vote to assuage the mobs of pro-Palestinian protesters who have been losing patience with the party.
Another option open to Starmer, if he has decided that sticking to his previous principled position of support for Israel was becoming too inconvenient, was to encourage his MPs to vote for the nationalist motion. That would undoubtedly have pleased the Islamists and Hamas apologists who besiege MPs’ offices and homes.
And so Sir Lindsay made a ruling that served as a great relief to Starmer. The processes and procedures of the Commons were violated in order for MPs to avoid the anger of people whose approach to modern politics – intimidation and threats of violence – might be standard practice in certain dysfunctional Third World theocracies but which have been decisively rejected here in Britain.
Until now. Now we appease such sentiments. Now we tell them that we will do what they demand so long as they stop bullying us.
I like Sir Lindsay Hoyle. After the long decade of John Bercow’s grandstanding, arrogance and bullying, it is refreshing to see a Speaker admit to having made a mistake. I hope he survives this latest crisis and that his detractors might come round to acknowledging it would be better for him to remain in the chair.
But his survival isn’t a given, and neither would his departure necessarily be wrong. And if he has to resign, it would cast a huge cloud of doubt over the future of the man whose lawyerly arguments and gifts of persuasion led Sir Lindsay to this pass. If the Speaker were to go, attention would – and should – immediately turn to a Labour leader and potential prime minister who is now suspected of sacrificing parliamentary democracy to the demands of the mob.
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