More than 1150 of you have voted so far...
How would you rate the performance of Michael Martin as Speaker of the House of Commons?
Excellent 1%
Good 4%
Adequate 9%
Poor 29%
Dreadful 57%
Do you think it is now time for Michael Martin to step down as Speaker?
Yes 90%
No 10%
Which of the following do you think will happen?
Michael Martin will be ousted in a no confidence vote 6%
He will realise the game is up and stand down voluntarily in the next few months 18%
He will announce shortly that he will stand down before the end of the year 11%
He will stand down at the next election 41%
he intends to continue well beyond the next election 24%
Do you think it is right to continue with convention that the governing Party provides the Speaker?
Yes 13%
No 75%
Don't Know 13%
Come back later to find out who you voted as the most likely successor to Michael Martin...
How would you rate the performance of Michael Martin as Speaker of the House of Commons?
ReplyDeleteExcellent 1%
Does Michael Martin read your page then?
Must be Damian Green's vote.....!! :-)
ReplyDeleteSpeakers are 'dragged' reluctantly to the chair to commemorate the sad history of previous speakers given the chop by unappreciative monarchs.
ReplyDeleteTime to return to that tradition and thus give new meaning to the ceremony.
Hardly surprising but still not good, would be my summary.
ReplyDeleteIt is not convention that the governing party provides the Speaker - not sure where you got that idea?
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, 1% thought MM is "excellent"; nice to see the Speaker is a reader of your blog, then.
It's also my recollection that Niccolo Machiavelli is right...happy to be open to correction but the convention of alternating between the two main parties began sometime in the middle of the last century before Labour broke it during their current stint.
ReplyDeleteNice work Iain.
ReplyDeleteI think the governing party has far too many unfair electoral powers. These include the timing of elections, ability to bully the BBC, party political control of the current Speaker, using civil service budgets for party political ends, control / hoarding of statistics and data, control of the Electoral Commission, etc, etc.
It's no wonder that winning an election is such a tough thing!
The Speaker should be an independent role on a fixed term, not an ex-MP necessarily, and selected by the Lords. A 'plague on both your houses' approach with loyalty only to upholding the sanctity of Parliament should be paramount.
Speaker Martin is dreadful, how on earth did he ever get the job?
ReplyDeletePredictable
ReplyDeleteIain is right about the convention and the rest of you are wrong. There was a period in which Speakers alternated simply because governments alternated. Boothroyd is the only opposition MP to get the job, and only then because Major dropped the ball.
ReplyDeleteWellllll I was/am happy to be corrected by almost anybody but Jimmy is usually wrong so he doesn't count for me.
ReplyDeleteSo until further evidence comes forward I'm sticking with belief in the convention that Mr. Machiavelli has posted.
Jimmy - annoyance by something connected unentirely with you has goaded me into researching the fact that Gorbals was the second consecutive ex-Labour Speaker, breaking the convention of alternation between Labour and Conservative members which happened from 1965 through to the 1992 election of the Speaker.
ReplyDeleteIf it looks like an convention and quacks like a convention...
I'm delighted at your foray, however brief, from the faith-based, to the reality-based community. Did your researches throw up any example of
ReplyDeletea) a Labour MP becoming Speaker before 1965
b) an opposition MP becoming Speaker other than in 1992?
Jimmy, and I'm delighted to stroll through. Although we disagree on basically just about everything it's good to cross swords amicably.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't mean I don't think you're wrong about just about everything though. And the faith-based comment might confuse people who aren't denizens of multiple sites :-)
No, I haven't looked much further but I might...have paid work to achieve...but seriously - what length of time do you regard something to become a "convention"?
I'd say this was long enough to be 'established form'. You?
Given that only one opposition MP has ever been elected to the post, I'd say that was a pretty elastic definition of convention. You could make a far more plausible case for a "convention" that the Speaker be a member of the Labour Party.
ReplyDeleteJimmy is right on this. The convention goes back much longer than 1965 - you'll note there were consecutive Whig/Liberal speakers between 1835 and 1905 and consecutive Conservative speakers between 1928 and 1965. It was only because of the parties alternating in government so much that 1965-1992 saw the post rotate, but the actual convention was followed in 1992 when Peter Brooke was nominated. It's just that MPs were reluctant to have someone who had only just left the Cabinet in the chair.
ReplyDeleteUnder the old voting system, the government proposed a motion that "MP A", always one of their own, would be placed in the chair. The "contested election" would be on an amendment to replace "MP A" with "MP B" and the vote was on that. Only in 1992 has such an amendment succeeded.
Memories in politics are often short - look how many people think the US red/blue colour scheme has always been used the way it is, when it only took effect as a universal system 8 years ago!
Tim, I think both Jimmy and I are in parts right and wrong. Historically he has a very valid point. More recently you must agree (I'd hope) that the trend is in the direction of my argument.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to pose the same question to you which I lobbed towards Jimmy (without answer)...how long do *you* think something needs to happen for it to become a 'convention'?
Well the problem is that 1965-1992 fitted both versions.
ReplyDeleteStrictly the most technically accurate description of the convention was that the first MP to be proposed for the chair was always a government MP - see my detailing of how the election worked at ConservativeHome
I'd argue that 1992 was a one-off exception because of the circumstances - an immediate ex Cabinet Minister not going down well, plus a long running campaign to elect Boothroyd as the first female Speaker. But even in 1992 the initial nominee was from the government benches and I'm not aware of arguments about making the Speakership rotate between the main parties being invoked then. Really for the "party rotation" convention to hold water you'd need evidence that that was the principle reason for 1992 going the way it did.
In terms of how long it would take to make something a convention, there's no firm answer when reasons and results overlap. But I'd say in the case of the Speaker it would take about four or five elections but that would have to include multiple cases of main party rotation and the government of the day producing different results.