Tag Archives: Lindsay

No evidence of bullying in fracking vote, says Commons Speaker

Tense scene in the voting lobby: Labour MP Chris Bryant tweeted this image as the fracking vote was taking place.

Are we all greatly reassured by the words of Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle?

He seems to think that the words of one Conservative MP are enough to prove that nobody was bullied into backing the government during a controversial vote on fracking a couple of weeks ago, that ended up bringing down Liz Truss’s government.

According to a BBC report,

Labour MP Chris Bryant said he witnessed “clear bullying” in the division lobby of the House of Commons during the vote on 19 October.

But one Conservative MP, Alexander Stafford, rejected the claims, saying he had a “frank and robust conversation” with members of the government outside the voting lobbies but “nothing more”.

Sir Lindsay told MPs: “… While some members thought that physical contact was being used to force a member into the lobby, the member concerned has said very clearly that this did not happen.”

I can’t say I’m convinced.

The impression I had was that both Jacob Rees-Mogg and Therese Coffee had been accused of manhandling Tory MPs – plural – into supporting the then-government’s line that fracking should be allowed to resume in the UK. Relying on the words of just one member – referring to what happened to them alone – seems very poor evidence-gathering indeed.

Perhaps it isn’t important now. Truss is out of Downing Street and the new administration under Rishi Sunak has said that fracking will not resume after all.

But if we can’t trust that investigations of wrongdoing in Parliament are thorough and fair, then what should we think of any such matters in the future?

Looking to the future, it seems clear that the archaic voting system at Westminster, in which members physically walk through lobbies, has had its day.

The devolved governments in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland all have electronic voting systems.

To prevent even the suggestion of physical bullying, it’s time the same system was introduced to the Houses of Parliament.

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Jacob Rees-Mogg shows how powerless Commons Speaker is

Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle tried to put Jacob Rees-Mogg in his place after the Business Secretary took details of a new policy to the media rather than announcing it to Parliament first, as is required.

But Hoyle has no power here. Nor does Parliament. Rees-Mogg’s behaviour shows us that the UK’s democracy is flatlining.

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Karma for Coyle: Labour suspends the whip after allegedly racist remarks

Caught: Neil Coyle has admitted making racist remarks.

Keir Starmer may have spent months delaying any investigation of anti-Semitism by Neil Coyle but he has acted faster over a second allegation of racism against the far-right Labour MP.

It only took Starmer’s party a week to suspend its whip from Coyle after two claims were made about him.

British-Chinese journalist Henry Dyer has reported Sinophobic remarks by Coyle to Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle after a meeting in the Strangers’ Bar on the Parliamentary estate on the evening of February 1.

Mr Dyer claimed he had also witnessed Coyle “angrily shouting at a Labour staffer” in the bar the previous evening.

It is understood that after the Speaker became aware of Mr Dyer’s allegations, he convened a meeting with the Serjeant at Arms who ordered that Coyle should be suspended from bars in the Commons for six months. Authorities in the House of Lords are believed to have taken similar action.

Labour has said that the party’s chief whip, Alan Campbell, has suspended Coyle from membership of the Parliamentary Labour Party, pending an investigation.

Coyle has released a statement apologising for his comments (so he has admitted making them). He said he had apologised to all those involved and would be co-operating fully with the inquiry.

It is good that Starmer has acted at last over his out-of-control right-winger.

But it is strange that it took a week for his party to suspend the whip and start an investigation; contrast it with his immediate suspension of the whip from Jeremy Corbyn on the basis of a false interpretation of that MP’s words about anti-Semitism.

And Coyle is the subject of anti-Semitism claims on which Labour has been sitting for more than six months.

So karma has struck; if Coyle got away with anti-Semitism, he has still been caught for racism.

But the incident highlights prejudice in Starmer’s Labour – unless they fall foul of outside authorities, his right-wing supporters enjoy privileged exemption from the rules.

Source: Labour MP Neil Coyle has party whip suspended following alleged racist remarks

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#Johnsonlies – UK prime minister breaks #MinisterialCode by failing to correct the record

Remember This Site’s article a couple of days ago, showing how Boris Johnson had said fears over inflation were “unfounded”, then lied to MPs that he hadn’t?

Here’s the video clip with all the information you need:

I should have added that Johnson was subsequently challenged to correct the record – but didn’t:

The Ministerial Code is clear: he should have corrected the record immediately – but he didn’t.

And Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle told him to sit down – effectively preventing him, it seems, from doing so!

It seems clear that both Johnson and Hoyle have some explaining to do.

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#Police will be asked to investigate Parliamentary #drug use. We know what they’ll say!

Hoyle: is this how he’ll react when the Metropolitan Police refuse to investigate cocaine use in Parliament, on grounds that they don’t investigate crimes retrospectively?

The Commons Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, has announced that he will ask the Metropolitan Police to investigate cocaine use in Parliament:

Apparently all but one of 12 lavatory areas in Parliament that were tested showed traces of cocaine.

That’s all very well, but we know what the answer will be, after Cressida Dick’s response to complaints about the Downing Street Christmas party of December 18, 2020:

It turns out that Met Commissioner Cressida Dick herself previously said the Met had many retrospective investigations on the go:

But that was a while ago. Clearly the new less-than-one-year limitation on investigating crime retrospectively came in after 2017.

Funny that none of us ever heard of it, though…

Still, we know the answer Hoyle will hear – right?

So the Met Police won’t be investigating druggie MPs.

If it does launch a probe, then the failure to investigate the Downing Street party will be a serious breach of procedure. But we know that already, too – right?

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Who doctored Hansard to protect this Tory racist? Did she do it herself?

Boris Johnson [Image: The Agitator].

Not only did a Tory minister make false claims to Parliament about racism in the Labour Party, but the official record of the debate – Hansard – was doctored to make it seem that she did not.

Worse still, Victoria Atkins had already added to her party’s tally of racism by telling a fellow MP who happens not to be white to know her place and not be uppity with her betters (although she didn’t use those exact words).

Her shocking abuse of her position has sparked a demand for the Commons Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, to take action – not just to correct the record but to save the reputation of the House of Commons.

Here’s just one complaint to Hoyle, from Twitter, with follow-up messages to show the issue:

You can see that Leftworks is absolutely correct by watching this video (ironically posted by a fan of Atkins).

She did indeed quote the EHRC’s remit as though it were that organisation’s conclusion – it was not – and Hansard did indeed insert three words to falsify the record.

The effect of Atkins’s words at the time they were said, and in that place, would have been to negate Jeremy Corbyn’s argument – she was effectively saying that he was a racist and therefore had no right to accuse others.

Furthermore, of course, her claim about Luciana Berger needing police protection was false.

Right-thinking people are up in arms about this – and rightly so:

Ms Atkins, who was standing in for her racist boss, Home Secretary Priti Patel, was in the Commons to answer an urgent question on what the government would do to stop racist abuse on the social media.

Patel had been – rightly – accused of “stoking” such abuse by Tyrone Mings of the England football team, whose teammates Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho were victims of it.

When she was tackled on the racism of her own prime minister by rising Labour star Zarah Sultana, Atkins treated her as if she were a black housemaid in the pre-Civil War American south, warning her to “lower” her “tone”:

I make no apologies for adding in this tweet, which includes much of the same video material, for the sake of Seema Chandwani’s observation about the way Ms Sultana was treated:

Shall we have a think about racism by the prime minister – that’s Boris Johnson, by the way – and by Atkins’s boss Patel?

Let’s start with Priti Patel, who locked asylum-seekers from foreign countries into filthy concentration camps where overcrowding caused hundreds of them to catch Covid-19. How many of them died? We haven’t seen the figures.

She wants to bring in a new law making it an offence to help refugees into the UK – even by saving them from drowning in the sea off the UK’s coasts.

Another Bill passing through Parliament at the moment will target the GRT community – Gypsies, Romanies and Travellers – by assuming that they are committing crimes simply because they are Gypsies, Romanies or Travellers. This is classically-defined racism.

The Home Office at which Atkins is a minister destroyed the records showing that members of the Windrush Generation were UK citizens – and then pursued an aggressive policy to deny them services they had spent decades funding, like NHS healthcare and state benefits, while taking action to deport them. One may conclude from this that Atkins is a racist herself.

Need I go on?

As for Boris Johnson, Twitter has been full of commentary on his racism:

That’s right – he actually approached a black woman at a party, made monkey noises at her and tried to hand her a watermelon.

How about some more references to Johnson’s historical pronouncements?

This is now a summary of commentators’ attitude to Johnson:

And – thankfully – the fact of his racism is filtering through to the general public, despite the protection he gets from the Tory media:

Perhaps the last word on Johnson’s racism should be this, that relates it back to Atkins:

As for Hansard: it seems the record may be edited – possibly by MPs themselves – but not if the meaning of the words spoken is changed by those edits:

The changes to Atkins’s speech change the meaning of the words and are therefore not permissible.

As Commons Speaker – the MP who chairs sessions of the House of Commons – Lindsay Hoyle needs to act to save its reputation.

How many other changes are being made to Hansard, that nobody catches because they happen surreptitiously?

And why would Hoyle – or anyone working in Parliament – wish to support or enable these Tory racists?

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Bryant admonished by Hoyle over ‘face-pulling’ during PMQs. Shame it was nothing to do with Johnson

Chris Bryant: what did he do?

Politics has come to a pretty pass when Chris Bryant pulling faces at the Speaker is more interesting than Prime Minister’s Questions!

That’s what appears to have happened today (December 9).

During the weekly exchange between Boris Johnson and Labour leader Keir Starmer, Speaker Lindsay Hoyle halted proceedings and addressed Bryant:

It seems Bryant had left the chamber but returned later, standing next to the Speaker’s chair for a hushed discussion, at the end of which, Hoyle was heard saying, “Mr Bryant I think we need this conversation later.”

Bryant shrugged. Some say he was heard saying, “Fine.” And then he left the chamber.

Speculation about what it was that Bryant actually did to cause such ire in the Speaker has been rife:

Some of the news websites are claiming that Bryant’s offence was simply standing in front of a door.

According to Politics Home,

One backbencher who was sat in the Commons said the row was about where Bryant was standing, allegedly in front of a door that had been left open for ventilation.

The MP said: “The speaker told him to move and he wouldn’t. They then had a face pulling and finger pointing contest.”

If true, it is a shame. Bryant’s reputation would have soared if he had been pulling faces at Johnson, as this now-deleted tweet indicates:

It reads: “Good to see Chris Bryant chased out of the House by the Speaker for pulling a slightly quizzical face which was clearly putting the Prime Minister off from telling his intergalactic lies.”

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Commons Speaker refuses bid to debate government diktats – but it may IMPROVE democracy

Speaking up: Lindsay Hoyle wasn’t quite this active in his speech, but his words were strong.

What was the point of Lindsay Hoyle’s intervention about Boris Johnson treating Parliament with contempt?

He spoke up to say the way the government has used secondary legislation – statutory instruments – to exercise power in the Covid-19 crisis has been “totally unsatisfactory”.

But then he said he’s blocking an amendment of the temporary provisions in the Coronavirus Act 2020 – that allows Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock to use those powers!

See for yourself:

He did say that he’ll be extremely sympathetic to motions that call for the government to send ministers to the Commons to defend undemocratic moves to restrict citizens’ freedoms in the future.

And it seems likely that Tory backbenchers will take advantage of this; all is not well between Downing Street and the Tory backbenches.

It raises a crucial question:

Could Tory rebels bring Johnson down – in the middle of a national health crisis – in the name of democracy?

Amazingly, because of Keir Starmer’s assurances of support, it seems the government is more likely to be defeated by members of its own party than by Her Majesty’s Opposition – and that’s an unhealthy position for a Labour leader.

The public will see that Starmer is not doing the job for which he was elected and will turn further against him.

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Local lockdown to hit northeast England – but why was it first announced on TV?

Speaking too soon: Robert Jenrick announces restrictions on northeast England, on the Peston TV show.

BBC news has announced – around midday today, September 17 – that the northeast of England will be subjected to stronger Covid-19-related restrictions because of increased infections there. It’s not quite a local lockdown but close.

I knew this last night because Robert Jenrick announced it on television, on Robert Peston’s ITV political chat show.

The only reason I didn’t publish a story straight away was fatigue (I had been awake for around 19 hours on the trot by then) – and also I wanted to know what Commons Spaker Lindsay Hoyle would have to say about this breach of regulations:

Some are saying this is another example of Dominic Cummings-style “government by media”, although I can’t see any advantage for the Tories in doing this.

Who benefits from Jenrick’s announcement, which came just 13 hours (and a bit) before the statement in Parliament?

The people of the northeast? No – the difference in timing still isn’t enough for them to properly prepare, if they need to.

The government? No – this is an admission that a government policy has failed.

Robert Jenrick? No – he was announcing something that nobody wanted and is more likely to be resented for it. In any case, he’s widely considered to be as bent as a nine-bob note (see his record of corruption on planning matters).

Robert Peston benefits, because the announcement was on his show.

But what’s the tactical advantage for the Tories? Are they trying to set up some kind of divide-and-rule rivalry between Peston and Piers Morgan, whose breakfast show can’t get government spokespeople because they’re afraid he’ll rip them to shreds?

That seems pointless because the Tories lose more than they gain, if they get another reprimand from Speaker Hoyle.

Perhaps Jenrick was speaking on his own initiative – a loose cannon, as it were.

If so, let’s hope he shot himself in the foot.

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Is this plan for daily Covid testing of MPs simply to shore up support for Johnson?

Speaker: Lindsay Hoyle in action.

Why is the Commons Speaker, who is supposed to be neutral, suggesting a plan to re-fill Parliament with braying Boris Johnson loyalists?

Johnson made a fool of himself at Prime Minister’s Questions last week when his pre-scripted attack on Keir Starmer about a spurious connection with terrorism exposed him to ridicule.

Some commentators said Johnson was finding it hard to stand up to Starmer without the support of hundreds of Tory backbenchers behind him, egging him on.

So now Lindsay Hoyle has proposed a plan to pack the screaming mob back in:

MPs could be tested daily for coronavirus to allow them to safely fill the chamber of the House of Commons, the Speaker has suggested.

Sir Lindsay Hoyle told Times Radio he had spoken to the NHS and government about getting “a quick turnaround of tests” to allow more MPs in.

Of course, some of us have been asking why MPs have been saying it is safe for our children to be packed back into schools when they are still working from home because they fear catching the virus so much.

It is possible that a return to full attendance at the House of Commons will encourage some of them to claim that it was a silly criticism.

If so, we’ll have to remind them that the situation isn’t the same – because I don’t see the government authorising daily testing of every school attendee. Do you?

Source: Coronavirus: Test MPs for Covid-19 every day, says Speaker – BBC News

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