The Speaker fiasco: What is going on in the House of Commons?
Yesterday’s events in the House of Commons was quite confusing and, depending on who you talk to, saw different parties playing political games over a backdrop of the horrors going on in Gaza. So what actually happened?[1][2]
After questions to the prime minister at noon, the schedule for the rest of the parliamentary day was an SNP opposition day. Essentially, the Scottish National Party receives 3 days per parliamentary session to be able to raise their own motions in the House of Commons, and they decided today to hold a motion to support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
The SNP has been calling for an immediate ceasefire since fighting flared up again back in October 2023, while the Labour party has only this month pivoted to an immediate ceasefire but only on several conditions.
Usually on opposition days, parliament would vote on the motion raised by the opposition party, in this case the SNP, and then for an amendment tabled by the government at the end of the debate.
Today however, the Speaker of the House put forward a Labour amendment to the SNP motion alongside the other two. This move has not happened since 1999 when the then Speaker chose an opposition Conservative amendment during the Liberal Democrats’ opposition day. It is worth noting that the Labour party, due to being the biggest opposition party, gets 17 of these opposition days compared to the 3 opposition days that the SNP receive.
The Labour amendment to the SNP motion would remove mentions of ‘collective punishment of the Palestinian people’, a war crime, which could absolve Israel of some guilt in the eyes of the final motion. The SNP called the amendment “deficient” and is critical that the Labour party did not use one of their many opposition days to hold a vote on a ceasefire.
Within the Labour party there were signs of a possible rebellion for Keir Starmer. Back in November, a similar SNP motion saw a major rebellion in Labour with over 50 MPs defying the whips to vote for it.. Many on the left of the party would’ve preferred to vote for the SNP motion unamended, such as former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, while many on the right including the Shadow Cabinet might’ve preferred to vote with the government on a more watered-down amendment. By tabling their own amendment, Labour avoided a rebellion.
Some therefore speculate within the SNP and Conservative party that the Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, who was a Labour MP prior to his appointment, might’ve been pressured into selecting a Labour amendment to save their party an embarrassment in the vote.
Early reporting alleged that Hoyle was told by senior Labour figures that he would not be re-elected as Speaker after the 2024 election if he didn’t table this amendment today - Hoyle and Labour both dispute this. Keir Starmer said in response, “I can categorically tell you that I did not threaten the Speaker in any way whatsoever. I simply urged to ensure that we have the broadest possible debate.”
Mr Speaker, in defence of his actions, said he wanted to give MPs a chance to vote on “the widest range of propositions” and did not purposely give Labour any political advantage. During his apology to the house a few hours after the chaos began, he stated “"I regret how it ended up. it was never my intention for it to end up like this”, believing he did the right thing for all sides of the House. The clerks of the house, the Speaker’s advisers, supposedly warned the speaker that this decision would not be a good idea.
Many Labour MPs have full confidence in the Speaker and claim the SNP and Conservatives are trying to ‘play politics’ with the Gaza ceasefire and it backfired.
SNP and Conservative MPs and supporters aren’t totally sold. As of writing, 65 MPs from across the two parties have signaled that they have no confidence in the Speaker. The prime minister said the speaker’s actions were “very concerning” although didn’t call for his resignation. At one-point members from both parties seemingly walked out of parliament.
Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader, was furious both yesterday and today. During the heat of the anger, he said “I'm afraid that [the decision] is treating myself and my colleagues in the Scottish National Party with complete and utter contempt. I will take significant convincing that your position is not now intolerable.”
Hoyle also stated that a contributing factor to his decision was the safety of members on all sides of the house from intimidation and harassment from their constituents. During debates, Robert Jenrick, the former Immigration minister from 2022–2023, said that “we allow Islamist extremists to intimidate British members of parliament”. Outside parliament, the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” was projected onto Elizabeth Tower.
Amidst protests nationwide, a Labour MSP stated that his constituency office had been ‘stormed by protestors” despite video footage seemingly showing peaceful protesting. The deaths of Jo Cox in 2016 and Sir David Amess in 2021 have led in recent times to concerns over MP safety. Although some critics argue that peaceful protesting and being held accountable is being confused by some as threats of violence.
With a lull in the chaos momentarily during the debate, where some amazing speeches like that given by SNP MP Mhiari Black were given, the House of Commons fired back up when it came to voting on the motion itself.
The government then withdrew their own amendment to the motion. Some pundits speculate that many Conservative MPs were planning to vote for either the Labour or SNP amendments and the government’s own amendment would not receive enough support. Labour MP Chris Bryant argued that if the government lost their amendment vote, it would be as if the government had lost control of its own foreign policy signalling a loss of confidence - which would require an immediate general election.
With the gov’t withdrawing their amendment, the order of events that the Speaker had set out would no longer work - two votes would be held then. The first on the Labour amendment to the SNP motion, and then on the motion itself. This meant that the original SNP motion would only be voted on IF the Labour amendment was struck down, which wouldn’t happen as Labour held more support from the majority of MPs. The annoyance from some was that for members like Labour’s John McDonnell, who later stood up and clarified his position to put on the record, would vote for his own party’s amendment but would’ve voted too for the SNP motion if he could’ve.
More chaos though was still yet to come. With the Speaker missing in action, the Deputy Speaker was set to hold the vote on the motions of the debate. Voting first on the Labour amendment to the motion, the deputy speaker did not hold a division.
In the House of Commons, to save time, they will only hold an actual vote (called a division) if there are actually disagreements within members. To gauge this, the Speaker will bring forward a question, and ask those in favour to say ‘aye’ followed by ayes, and those in favour to say ‘no’ followed by noes. If nobody says ‘no’ during their portion, then the vote will pass unanimously without a vote.
So when it came to vote on the Labour amendment, it received loud shouts of aye when asking for those in favour, before a quite quiet request for those against from the deputy speaker, followed by even more ayes, but some distinct noes. With significant noise during the votes against, the deputy speaker should’ve called for a division to vote. But instead, she called the vote for the ‘ayes’, passing the amendment.
Then, she moved to vote on the motion itself, now carrying the amended Labour motion. During this vote, I can barely even hear her ask for those against and I’m listening to a recording and not in the actual tense and loud chamber. Very loud ayes were heard through both, although definitely distinct no voters for those against. But once again, she declared that the motion passed unopposed, and did not hold an actual vote.
Following the Speaker’s return and subsequent apology and argument with the SNP leader and chief whip, the Shadow Leader of the House, Labour’s Lucy Powell asked, “Can I just make a point of order that the amendment in the name of the leader of the opposition was this evening passed unanimously and therefore-” before being cut off by shouting the speaker declaring it “wasn’t the time”.
This did lead to some confusion on what had happened. The problem with this is that regardless of whether the motion would pass or not in an actual vote, because realistically it still would’ve passed, no MP actually recorded their vote on it.
Kit Malthouse, the former Education minister during Liz Truss’ premiership, would then tell the deputy speaker, “you seem to have rammed through two decisions that were quite important”, stating that “no individual vote will have been recorded”. He asks if it would be possible to “either void [the vote] or rum them again”. The Deputy Speaker then insists that nobody called against the motion, to which the parliament erupts in disagreement.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, a notable figure, then states that it was “quite clear from the level of noise when the question was put that the view was being challenged”, following that “it is inconceivable that anybody hearing it would have thought it was ‘aye’” before proclaiming that “it should go to a division”. Shocking, I personally agree with Rees-Mogg here. The Deputy Speaker replied that she was “quite clear where we were. The whole thing would have been clearer if the government had not withdrawn [their amendment]”.
This was followed by many MPs from both sides of the chamber wanting to put on the record how they would’ve voted such as the aforementioned John McDonnell and the Conservative MP for Peterborough Paul Bristow who asked: “How can I make my views more known to my constituents?”. He went onto say that he “was one of the first MPs to call for the release of hostages and a permanent ceasefire. I lost my government job as a result.” before claiming that Labour councillors were tweeting that he wouldn’t have supported a ceasefire. He finished by asking for advice on “how I can make my constituents clear of my views, given that I was not able to vote”. This very much surmises the problem with not holding an actual vote on such an important issue.
I do believe that this may have been a genuine lapse in judgement by the speaker, although he was warned against it, and his position may be untenable. Within twenty four hours over 10% of parliamentarians have signed no confidence in the speaker, but no speaker has been expelled from office by a vote in over 100 years. Many Conservatives, Labour, and Liberal Democrat MPs still have their full support in Sir Lindsay Hoyle as speaker. And then I also think the Deputy Speaker made a huge mistake not holding a vote there and then.
Wherever the fiasco leads, let’s hope that parliament never embarrassed itself like this again. For a day about a ceasefire in Gaza, parliament became a mess of differing opinions around procedure and favouritism and corruption. And, despite there being no vote, the Labour amended motion passed, calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, no military assault on Rafah, the release of all hostages, and immediate humanitarian relief. Overall, a good thing, even if the SNP motion would’ve gone further to condemn Israel’s actions in the region.
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