An uncertain elevation

There is much dismay over the possibilty that Michael Martin may be elevated to the Lords.

Dizzy sums it up well

Imagine, if you will, that an Executive board member of a FTSE 100 company was found to have been presiding over a massive accounting misdemeanor in the company, that meant most of the staff were constantly taking the Michael (no pun intended) and submitting dodgy claims for taxis, food, and other expenses from the company.
Imagine too that this Executive board member decided that given his position in the whole mess he should resign. Now imagine if he resigned and he was suddenly made a non-Executive director of the same company by the Managing Director. Meanwhile, in the lower ranks of the company the others caught up by a scandal were looking for new work and packing up their desks in disgrace.

Reaction of the speaker shows a dark side

So according to Steven Richards the Tory benches attitude to the new speaker shows their dark side.

Writing in the Independent this morning

Anyone watching the anger on the faces of Tory MPs when the result was announced might assume that Bercow was a raving leftie. In fact he has made a stand on a number of limited issues including his support for gay adoption and for the abolition of the anti-gay Section 28. He lost his job on the front bench under Michael Howard partly for arguing that the budget for international development should be maintained rather than cut. Bercow's reward for being genuinely progressive on a limited number of issues was the loathing disdain of virtually the entire parliamentary Conservative party.

A line also taken by the Time's Danny Finkelstein who says that

If Conservative MPs are truly saying that Bercow's fairly low level dissent is utterly beyond the pale, that is pretty unattractive. It suggests a narrow, cliquey insistance upon uniformity.

A great letdown

The Commons then has elected its new speaker and that man is John Bercow.

To be honest I ma surprised at the choice,the reaction of the Tory benches said it all as he was dragged to the chair and there is already talk that he may not survive if or when the Tory party wins the next election.

The disappointing thing was that this appointment was not on the basis of what the people wanted but a result of internal Westminster intrigue and friendships.

This is not the result that will change the public's perception of Parliament.

And the voting has begun

So having just sat through the speaker's hustings,MP's are in the process of voting.

My thoughts on it for what they are worth.

John Bercow has probably shot himself in the foot,Margaret Beckett let herself down on delivery but if you listened hard the content was there.

Sir Alan Hazelhurst,though surely tainted with the last holder of the office delivered a very powerful speech as did Sir George Young.

Parmjit Dhanda was the only person to mention the word engagement in relation to the public and thus will be the darling of the blogosphere but not the commons.

Ann Widdecombe would surely be a good candidate if she was staying around but an interim won't work,I am afraid and her expression during John Bercow's speech did her no favours.

Sir Michael Lord surprised me as did Richard Shepherd,neither Sir Alan Beith and Sir Patrick McCormak did.

The odds seem to have swung to Sir George Young but anything can happen

The race is on.

Who will win the race for speaker which kicks off at 2.30 this afternoon?

Much ontrigue in the papers this morning who accuse the Whips of getting involved in what should be a totally independent election with the purpose of promoting Margaret Beckett to keep out John Bercow only to dump her at the end of the contest.

As Nick Robinson notes

many Labour and Tory MPs appear to be governed by entirely negative factors.

So what should be seen as an opportunity for a clean break may become embroiled in the worst of Westminster traditions.

As Fraser Nelson points out

So now we know the shortlist for Speaker - and it shows Westminster at its most vindictive, corrupt and spiteful. Exactly the same names you'd have expected before any of this expenses furore broke. I simply cannot now see how this race can be taken seriously. As far as I can work out, it has taken ten steps into farce.

According to Mike Smithson,the better markets are fixed on Labour's former foriegn secretary but as he says

of course, it’s not punters who decide for the election is restricted solely to the 644 current members of the house of commons and for the first time the voting for a speaker will take place by secret ballot.

Field backs Widdecombe for speaker

The race for speaker will grab our attention on Monday and Frank Field who himself withdrew from the race is backing rather strangely Ann Widdecombe in the Telegraph this morning.

His rational is that after the events of the last few weeks,the next holder of the position has to be whiter than white

I am well aware that she has drawbacks. But she has two advantages that none of the other candidates possess. She is whiter than white on the expenses front – and she is the one person who finds it easy to talk to the mass audience outside the House of Commons.

and adds that

in the year between now and when she retires, she is the candidate most likely to be able to re-establish a political bridgehead with our electorates. A cleaned-up Parliament will therefore be able to elect a new Speaker. She is also the only candidate under whom MPs know they won't be able to get away with some of the behaviour – let alone the excesses – that has been offered up by our expenses system.

You know he may just be right

Martin goes down with guns blazing

It was,to say the least,rather strange to see MP's falling over themselves to pay tribute to the speaker only weeks after hounding him out of his chair.

Nick Clegg,having been the only party leader to have publicly asked him to step down must have been in particular in a rather difficult position.

However Michael Martin was determined to go down with guns blazing.Effectively pointing the trigger at the party leaders,he maintained that if they had listened to him in July of last year,all the current furore could have been avoided.

"I wish with all my heart that those recommendations had won the confidence of the House last July and I wish that party leaders would have shown then some of the leadership which they have shown now,he said in his bowing out speech adding that

The response from this House was deeply disappointing. Half of the members did not attend to vote and more than half of those who did vote rejected the proposals.

Maybe that final fling was aimed at Gordon Brown? Benedict Brogan reminds us that

Gordon Brown, it should be remembered, allowed his allies to vote against reform, and didn't turn up for the vote.

Beckett for speaker

According to a report in First Post,Margaret Beckett is almost assured of being the next speaker.

Nigel Horne writes that

With only lightweight contenders put forward by the Tories and Lib Dems, Beckett should be assured of a smooth ride in the secret ballot of MPs. Apart from a few arch-Blairites, most Labour MPs can be expected to vote for her.

Despite no doubt incurring the wrath of Gordon Brpwn by resigning last Friday insisting that she wanted a promotion

her run for Speaker can be expected to get "below the radar" approval from Number Ten.

Motion of no confidence in the speaker

So the motion in no confidence in Michael Martin is going to be tabled.

Tory MP Douglas Carswell is to table the motion next week.

He has alreday collected names from across all three parties and thinks that he will get a lot more after MP's return to their constituencies over the weekend and gauge the public mood.

He told BBC News that

"We need a new speaker with a mandate for radical change to make politicians work for the people,"I'm not having a dig at Michael Martin because he is anything other than a decent, honest, honourable man.
"I just happen to think he is bad at doing the job of Speaker."

Speaker Martin to step down in June

It has been quite on the speaker front recently.

Michael Martin appears to have ridden out the storm over the Damien Green affair.

Sam Coates though claims that the hot gossip in Westminster is that Mr Martin may be stepping down in the summer.His logic being that

Labour will be keen to select a new Speaker before the end of the Parliament, while they still have a certain majority. That's the only way they could hope to stop a Tory speaker taking over, and there have even been suggestions recently of a tie-up with the Lib Dems perhaps to select Sir Ming (though I'd be sceptical given it's a secret ballot to select Martin's successor, making deals harder.)

The speaker's nest egg

Christopher Hope has a theory as to why the Speaker may be staying on,his pension?

the £1.5million pension which is lying in wait for him when he removes his white silk stockings for the final time.
The Speakers' pension is one of the last major perks in British public life, after changes to the Lord Chancellor's and Prime Minister's entitlements earlier this year.
The first £38,000 of his pension comes from his right to half of his final £76,000 salary as Speaker, payable on the day that he leaves office, regardless of age.
The second is for his right to two thirds of his final salary as an MP - by coincidence, also £38,000 a year - due on the day he quits as an MP, as long as he is over 65.

Sunday round up of Martin and Green (Oh and Boris and Gordon)

The Sunday Times story that the speaker may be considering staying on for a third term will surely fill some MP's with horror

The paper says that

The revelation – through his official spokeswoman – will be greeted with incredulity by many backbenchers, who had assumed he would step down at the end of this parliament. Although his critics acknowledge that he is determined not to be forced out, they hoped that he would retire quietly when the country went to the polls.

But perhaps of more interest is the news broken by the News of the World that

TORY MP Damian Green and his Home Office mole will NOT be charged in the leak scandal, the News of the World can reveal.
Prosecutors say papers seized from Mr Green’s Commons office cannot be used as evidence in a trial.
They add that cops FAILED to conduct a proper search in Westminster.
The conclusions, in a secret early review by the Crown Prosecution Service, coincide with the initial findings of an independent police probe.

It seems though that Boris Johnson may be about to embroiled in the mess

A formal complaint about Boris Johnson's involvement in the controversial Scotland Yard raid on the Houses of Parliament could lead to his suspension or removal as Mayor of London. He is accused of 'potentially corrupting' the Metropolitan Police investigation into leaks from the Home Office, which led to the arrest of the shadow immigration minister, Damian Green reports the Observer

Meanwhile http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1092580/Moles-row-deepens-Cabinet-traitor-Tory-bid-prove-Brown-guilty-sleaze.html reports that

The row over Westminster moles took an extraordinary turn last night after it was revealed that two senior Labour figures – including a Cabinet Minister – are behind a Conservative attempt to prove that Gordon Brown is guilty of sleaze.
The Tories have written to the Prime Minister claiming that the two prominent Labour politicians told them that Mr Brown broke the law by using a charity to bankroll his campaign to replace Tony Blair.

1st Labour MP calls for Martin to go

I see that we now have a Labour MP to come out against the speaker.

The maverick Bob Marshall-Andrews,speaking on the Today programme this morning has said that Michael Martin has lost the confidence of the Commons following the Damien Green affair.

He is the Labour MP to call publicly for the Speaker to go.Two Tories have already called for Martin's head and later today,Lib Dem MP Colin Breed said

"there is a growing body of opinion that feels he’s beginning to lose the consent of Parliament."

whilst stopping short of calling for his resignation.

Expect much more speculation in the Sunday's

Surely not a socialist plot

As usual Simon Heffer doesn't mince his words this morning in the Telegraph.

After a week which has seen the speaker under pressure over the Green arrest and then passing the buck to his Sergeant in arms and the leader of the Commons being asked five times to give him a vote of confidence,Heffer believes that it all comes down to the speaker's shunning of tradition

This is what Mr Heffer has to say

his conduct in the past 10 days since the police raided Damian Green's office has been disgusting even by his standards. In an age when people are cynical in the extreme about politicians, he has shown us there is still plenty more scope to be appalled by them

adding that

The important point about Mr Martin is that, first, he broke with tradition by giving someone plainly agreeable to him the post of Serjeant-at-Arms; and, second, that when something that should have been his responsibility went horribly wrong, he chose in the most undignified fashion to blame her.

Furthermore it is all Labour's fault in abandoning the traditions of the House

there is a deeper problem. It is Labour's (and I include Mr Martin in that group) lack of regard for history, and for the liberties hard-won throughout the past few hundred years.

Michael Martin off the hook,but the Met certainly aren't

It seems remarkable that the Sergeant in Arms,Jill Kay the Commons is not aware of the regulations surrounding the circumstances in which the police can enter the House.

The arrest of Damien Green clearly was not one and as Michael Martin skillfully passed the buck earlier today as he let the House know that it was Jill who authorised the search.

The speaker has granted a debate on the matter for next Monday and attention will swiftly pass to the police who failed to get a warrant to search the MP's private office and probably went well over the top in the whole matter.

Meanwhile the Prime Minister is sitting firmly on the fence refusing to commit to the question of the police until the inquiry of the seven wise men is over.

The speaker at the end of all this has come away if not entirely unscathed then at least living to fight another day.His seemed as angry as the Tory benches over the issue.

Although I note that Iain Dale thinks not

The granting of a debate on the issue on Monday and the creation of a Committee of Seven Wise MPs may buy Speaker Martin time. But he is a broken man, both politically and personally. One could almost feel the sympathy MPs felt for him. No one was willing to stick the boot in. But surely even his doughtiest defender would admit that his status and credibility is now terminally damaged.

The way that it was

How Times have changed.The media has not held back form its criticism of the speaker over the last few days.Over at Three Line Whip,Philip Johnson reminds us of a time when things were different.

In December 1956, the Sunday Express ran an article criticising MPs over the allocation of petrol allowances at a time of rationing brought on by the Suez crisis. Written by John Junor, the editor, it read: "Tomorrow a time of hardship starts for everyone. For everyone? Include the politicians out of that…"
The MPs were furious. They accused Junor of contempt of parliament and constituted the fearsome Committee of Privileges to consider the case.
Junor was summoned to appear at the bar of the House where he was reprimanded by the Speaker. With a good deal of dignity, he apologised "for any imputation or reflections which I may have cast upon the honour and integrity of the Members of this House

One of todays candidates for being hauled in front of the Commons would surely be Quentin Letts in the Mail who has never tried to hide his distate for "Gorbals Mick"

Writing today he describes events in the Commons

"Point of Order, Mr Winnick," croaked Gorbals Mick, apparently unaware of the imminent whack.
He was only half concentrating, being busy chatting to a Labour backbencher at the time. One of many.
Mr Winnick, a frail figure who often stands at a slight angle, did not quite say: "You're a useless fool and should quit pronto." That would not be the Westminster way.

So how do you sack the speaker?

The speaker of the Commons,Michael Martin has come under a fair amount of pressure recently including a newsnight report that hinted that a number of MP's were concerned about his recent performances and rulings.

Ian Martin writing in this morning's Telegraph adds weight to the argument saying

The time has come for MPs to remove Speaker Michael Martin and replace him with one of their number who stands a better chance of restoring the reputation of the House of Commons. The situation has become so serious that only unprecedented action will do. He cannot go on.

Whilst he accepts that the speakers record on handling PMQ's,and his political bias are causing problems,Martin feels that his namesake is simply not the man to be in charge of the Palace of Westminster at such a precarious time.

Martin, symbolising an outmoded approach, cannot take charge as the holder of his office should. A character is required who will be strong enough to bend the party leaders to his will, persuade MPs to clean up their act and be the public face, on radio and television, of this new movement for parliamentary reform.

Quite how is to be carried out is unclear and is unprecidented for as Martin points out

Tradition dictates that only Michael Martin or God Almighty can remove him from his grand office, for a perfectly sensible reason: to avoid, wherever possible, the office becoming a football kicked around by the various party leaderships