Sir Lindsay Hoyle

[s1962a]

It's puzzling why he made this decision if he wasn't pressured or encouraged by others. Looks like his days are numbered.

https://news.sky.com/story/explained-why-speakers-...

[julian987R]

I wonder if more will come out, emails or whatsApp message, recordings of conversations.

[Gecko1978]

How can the speaker be made to do anything their seat is not contested which I find a bit undemocratic but given that how can they be made to do anything

[anonymous-user]

SNP will be ruthless in asking for mins of meeting between Speaker and Starmer to be published. I can feel Starmer feeling very uncomfortable.

[tim0409]

Gecko1978 said:

How can the speaker be made to do anything their seat is not contested which I find a bit undemocratic but given that how can they be made to do anything

I don’t think he was made to do anything; the suggestion is he was doing his old party a favour.

[Hill92]

Gecko1978 said:

How can the speaker be made to do anything their seat is not contested which I find a bit undemocratic but given that how can they be made to do anything

The House of Commons has to elect a new speaker at the beginning of each new parliamentary term following a general election. Normally the existing speaker is re-elected by the House unchallenged (the last instance of the existing speaker not being re-elected to the role was 1835) but apparently Labour threatened not to support him at least which would open the door for challengers to put themselves forward instead.

[anonymoususer]

Gone by next Tuesday

[BikeBikeBIke]

s1962a said:

It's puzzling why he made this decision if he wasn't pressured or encouraged by others. Looks like his days are numbered.

https://news.sky.com/story/explained-why-speakers-...

Seems totally reasonable to me, everyone got to vote for the wording they wanted. It's exactly what I'd have done in his situation.

[Vanden Saab]

BikeBikeBIke said:

s1962a said:

It's puzzling why he made this decision if he wasn't pressured or encouraged by others. Looks like his days are numbered.

https://news.sky.com/story/explained-why-speakers-...

Seems totally reasonable to me, everyone got to vote for the wording they wanted. It's exactly what I'd have done in his situation.

Not really, if you had a great idea and went to the board with it and your boss changed one word which altered the whole idea and claimed it as his own would you be happy?

[hidetheelephants]

Vanden Saab said:

BikeBikeBIke said:

s1962a said:

It's puzzling why he made this decision if he wasn't pressured or encouraged by others. Looks like his days are numbered.

https://news.sky.com/story/explained-why-speakers-...

Seems totally reasonable to me, everyone got to vote for the wording they wanted. It's exactly what I'd have done in his situation.

Not really, if you had a great idea and went to the board with it and your boss changed one word which altered the whole idea and claimed it as his own would you be happy?

They're furiously agreeing, it's a stupid pantomime over an irrelevant motion affecting nothing other than overwrought egos in the commons. They all need to take a pill and get on with actual governance.

[JNW1]

hidetheelephants said:

They're furiously agreeing, it's a stupid pantomime over an irrelevant motion affecting nothing other than overwrought egos in the commons. They all need to take a pill and get on with actual governance.

Absolutely; Israel will do what they'll do and a vote in the House of Commons is highly unlikely to change their minds. IMO our MP's would be far better spending their time on things they can control rather than things they can't....

[ATG]

BikeBikeBIke said:

s1962a said:

It's puzzling why he made this decision if he wasn't pressured or encouraged by others. Looks like his days are numbered.

https://news.sky.com/story/explained-why-speakers-...

Seems totally reasonable to me, everyone got to vote for the wording they wanted. It's exactly what I'd have done in his situation.

Precisely. Hoyle was giving the Commons an opportunity to have a proper debate while the SNP was trying to skewer Labour by anticipating that a Tory amendment would be made that was closer to the Labour leadership's previous position giving Labour MPs a choice between a "soft on Israel" and a "hard on Israel" position, neither of which reflected their own party's current official position. And the Tories did indeed put down such an amendment. To be clear, in their own right the SNP motion and both the amendments were reasonable and worth debating. The only thing that was going to turn this into a party political mess was that normal convention would mean that Labour's amendment would not be debated. So Hoyle and his officers took the decision to allow both amendments to be debated. The fact that the SNP, followed by the Tories, flounced out of the chamber doubling down on their pathetic manoeuvring speaks volumes about their complete lack of integrity. Anyone thinking that Hoyle made this decision because he was leaned on is a prize fool.

[Condi]

By my understanding he broken conventions. Not rules, but just conventions over the way things have been done for years. If he wanted to take all 3 motions to a vote - for understandable reasons - then he is entitled to do so. This is MPs crying foul because they don't like what he's done, but there is nothing other than convention to suggest he should have done differently. Even the advice published from the Clerk of the House says he is entitled to do it, and says so very explicitly.

[dbdb]

Condi said:

By my understanding he broken conventions. Not rules, but just conventions over the way things have been done for years. If he wanted to take all 3 motions to a vote - for understandable reasons - then he is entitled to do so. This is MPs crying foul because they don't like what he's done, but there is nothing other than convention to suggest he should have done differently. Even the advice published from the Clerk of the House says he is entitled to do it, and says so very explicitly.

The UK does not have a written constitution so much of what is done in Parliament is by convention. It is more than just doing things a certain way out of habit, conventions have force and it is very rare to go against them. They are the unwritten rules by which Parliament is run. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the tactics used by the political parties which have brought us to this, the convention that a political party cannot hijack another's opposition day is clear and for Sir Lindsay Hoyle to go against this seemingly to avoid political embarrassment for Sir Keir Starmer is not acceptable and it is little wonder that it should lead to a loss of confidence in him as Speaker. He should resign in my view. I also feel we should have a written constitution.

[hidetheelephants]

dbdb said:

I also feel we should have a written constitution.

We do have a constitution, it's just not codified into a few sides of A4 by a bunch of racist slave owners; instead we have a stack of dusty manuscripts recording some precedent or other, whether the MP for Dunny-on-the-Wold coughed during a speech by Pitt the Younger and thus got ejected from the chamber etc.

[dbdb]

hidetheelephants said:

dbdb said:

I also feel we should have a written constitution.

We do have a constitution, it's just not codified into a few sides of A4 by a bunch of racist slave owners; instead we have a stack of dusty manuscripts recording some precedent or other, whether the MP for Dunny-on-the-Wold coughed during a speech by Pitt the Younger and thus got ejected from the chamber etc.

Quite right, I actually meant a codified constitution, rather than a collection of documents.

[isaldiri]

dbdb said:

The UK does not have a written constitution so much of what is done in Parliament is by convention. It is more than just doing things a certain way out of habit, conventions have force and it is very rare to go against them. They are the unwritten rules by which Parliament is run. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the tactics used by the political parties which have brought us to this, the convention that a political party cannot hijack another's opposition day is clear and for Sir Lindsay Hoyle to go against this seemingly to avoid political embarrassment for Sir Keir Starmer is not acceptable and it is little wonder that it should lead to a loss of confidence in him as Speaker. He should resign in my view. I also feel we should have a written constitution.

This is fair I think. The speaker is in theory not really supposed to bail out the leader of the opposition from a self inflicted difficult spot by breaking fairly well established conventions just because starmer had came to him with some sob story about his MPs being put at risk. Part of Hoyle's pitch was 'not to be like Bercow' and today's action isn't a good look however one might try to excuse it as 'he gave the commons a chance of a proper debate'.

[Ridgemont]

isaldiri said:

This is fair I think. The speaker is in theory not really supposed to bail out the leader of the opposition from a self inflicted difficult spot by breaking fairly well established conventions just because starmer had came to him with some sob story about his MPs being put at risk. Part of Hoyle's pitch was 'not to be like Bercow' and today's action isn't a good look however one might try to excuse it as 'he gave the commons a chance of a proper debate'.

What seems weird is that the ‘conventions’ are well established here by all accounts. Opposition motions are divied up and the government can tack amendments. By hijacking the SNP’s allocated day, to allow multiple amendments it kind of makes a mockery of process and smacks of the worst of Bercow’s shenanigans (allowing the ‘house’ to set motions binding gov).
Not a SNP fan by any measure but I could understand Flynn’s anger.

It appears likely that Hoyle was genuinely motivated by an attempt to square individual MPs pain re being seen to have voted in a certain way but there are reports that coercion was used by Labour, and that tt McDonald even tried to get the mass of Palestinian protesters invited into the House ‘to avoid being rained on’.
The overall impression is of ludicrous amounts of non democratic pressure on a parliamentary process and somewhat worrying that an element of physical threat over MPs voting records may now be a ‘thing’. (Or more of a thing).

Watching the contemptible Bryant filibustering for 10 minutes in order to give time for Starmer to bulldoze Hoyle into a compromise that blew up in the speaker’s face, and then have the effing gall to allege that this proved that the tories had sacrificed the confidence of the house was something of a new low bar of political grandstanding.
And if this is an indication of how parliament will be run after the next election god help us all.

[JagLover]

ATG said:

Anyone thinking that Hoyle made this decision because he was leaned on is a prize fool.

Does that include the BBC?

BBC said:

Senior Labour figures told BBC Newsnight Sir Lindsay was left in no doubt Labour was prepared to see him replaced as Speaker after the next general election unless he selected the party's ceasefire amendment for a vote.

They said it was made clear to the Speaker he would need Labour votes to be re-elected and this might not be forthcoming.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68357080

Because the reason why people are saying it is that is what was being reported yesterday afternoon.

[Rufus Stone]

Is there any evidence yet?

Likely bravado from Labour which the BBC fell for. They are so gullible.