Betty Boothroyd ditched the wig (hair), Michael Martin stopped wearing the stockings and the rest of the bottom half flummery (Glaswegian industrial background) and Bercow just decided to go the rest of the way.
Thanks. Does the Speaker still wear the full rig for formal events, like the State Opening of Parliament?
No, it’s just a big, heavy black and gold robe instead of the day-to-day plain black one.
Assume I agree with you that May and the Tories have made a complete cock up of the Brexit process. I actually do, but I’m coming from a position of ignorance so I’m not confident enough to side with you yet.
It seems odd to me that the Speaker, who is supposed to be apolitical, has the power to nudge this one way or the other. Isn’t it the government’s responsibility to “ensure the House can express itself”? But then again, doesn’t the government have the power to frame the debate and bring those bills to the floor it deems appropriate?
I’m sure that in the UK and indeed the US that there are many bills that would pass by a majority on a free vote that the government (or in the U.S. the majority party of each House) simply refuses to bring to the floor because it is the majority and wants to enact its agenda. I mean, for example, have a GOP Congressman propose a bill allowing national concealed carry and see if Nancy Pelosi allows it to come to the House floor for a vote. It won’t. Did she fail in her duty to “ensure the House can express itself”?
I understand that a VONC is extraordinary step, but it seems no less extraordinary (indeed these votes are part and parcel of a parliamentary system) that having a Speaker, elected only for his skill in keeping order (Order!!!) to control the process in this manner. It seems very undemocratic.
Thank you again for your thoughtful replies to an uneducated member of the Colonies. 
It would seem to me in this instance that nobody supports what May has done or is doing. Her proposal does not have support in the Commons, she has no plan B, and the end result will be a no-deal Brexit. I don’t see why any MP, whether he or she be Tory, Labour, or DUP would want to sit on their hands and allow it to happen.
Why do they not form a coalition and agree on a Brexit strategy that will get a majority and form a new government on those principles if necessary?
BTW, I got my viewing privileges back today, but it only lasted for two hours. The dog barked at the postman and I couldn’t help myself. AW-DAH! aw-DAH! I’m afraid I will keep doing this until I get either divorced or murdered. However I am going out of town Monday night and will sneak it. Some women worry about their husbands committing adultery out of town; she will be worried that I am watching Commons proceedings on YouTube.
So it seems that Labour is planning a no-confidence vote asap:
Whether a no-confidence vote will pass or not is another story, as the DUP will probably support the Government.
Tories have their own plans:
Whatever happens it’s going to be dramatic and interesting. I’m laying in supplies of popcorn.
You’ve got to love Bercow in high-school teacher mode, as though he’s dealing with a class of unruly students. This seems to work with boarding-school + Oxbridge crowd.
This video is a collection of brilliant moments, but unfortunately a bit one-sided.
The point at stake was to test whether the House felt the government were doing so, on the timing point. Don’t forget, it took a court ruling to make them seek formal approval from the House to submit the Article 50 withdrawal notice in the first place.
As, in this case, it has done and is in the process of doing at the moment, until the decisive vote next Tuesday. What Bercow did was to allow a procedural amendment on what happens if that vote does not go the government’s way.
Technically, we won’t know until the vote on Tuesday what the balance of forces is. At the moment, it looks as though you’re right, but while it’s clear what there’s a majority against (the agreement), it isn’t clear what there’s a majority for, or how much bitter opposition the proponents of any one course of action are willing to risk provoking.
A side-plot to all this is that there are signs of a cross-party movement for the House to take a positive initiative on voting for alternative ways forward, and indeed subterranean murmurings about the possible launch of a new centrist party, but it’s by no means certain what will create any greater unity in a debate with such a bitter divide and no clear majority - nor that there’s time to do anything positive before the clock runs out.
I wouldn’t say that it’s the government’s role; it’s the Speaker’s role. In a majority situation, they do have control over the debate and the bills that are brought forward. The Opposition parties don’t normally control the business of the House. But, the Government is accountable to the House. The Speaker normally has a role in ensuring that accountability, not by directing business (that’s for the Government House Leader), but in ruling on motions that require the Government to disclose its plans to the House.
I’m an outsider like you, but as far as I can tell from reading about Speaker Bercow, over his term in office he’s been consistent in ruling in favour of the Commons to uphold their constitutional authority to hold the government to account. He’s being heavily criticised for his procedural decision on this point, but it seems consistent with his actions over the past 10 years in the Speaker’s chair.
I don’t think it’s helpful to compare the roles of the Speaker of the House of Representatives to the Speaker in a parliamentary system. Aside from the name, their functions are very different. The US Speaker is more akin to the Government House Leader in a parliamentary system.
The Speaker’s not controlling the process; the House is. He didn’t move the amendment; Dominic Grieve, a backbench member of the Conservative Party (and former Attorney General) did so. It started in December, when it was thought that the vote would be held on the Withdrawal Agreement. Grieve moved the motion that in the event the Agreement was defeated, the Government would produce its Plan B in Parliament within 21 days: What does Dominic Grieve’s amendment mean for Brexit?. The motion passed the House of Commons in December, and was considered a political defeat for the Government, but not significant enough to be considered a confidence measure, as it was only about the course of proceedings in the House, not a vote on a major policy matter. According to this article, even then the issue was being mooted whether the motion was amendable.
What appears to have happened last week (and I’m certainly open to correction by those more in the know), is that Grieve moved an amendment to that previous motion, to change the deadline from 21 days to 3 days. That motion had to be considered by the Speaker, not on its merits, but whether as a procedural matter, the previous motion could be amended, under the rules of the House.
Speaker Brecow ruled that the amendment was in order and directed that it be debated. I don’t see how that’s undemocratic. It was an MP who raised the issue, and then it was up to the Speaker to make a procedural ruling. His ruling didn’t decide whether the amendment would pass; it was the Commons, the elected representatives of the people, who decided that the Government would have a 3 day deadline, not the initial 21 day deadline which the Commons had previously imposed.
Speaker Brecow seems, as far as I can tell from afar, to be consistent in favouring debate in the House, even if it might be uncomfortable for the Government. That strikes me as consistent both with the Speaker’s role and the principle that the Government is accountable to the House.
Interesting article from the Guardian:
John Bercow: Speaker unafraid to hold the government’s feet to the fire
One of the criticisms of Westminster style governments is that the executive has too much authority over the elected legislative branch. Brexit is likely the single most important issue to face the British in a generation. It doesn’t seem undemocratic that the Speaker has a preference to ensure that the matter is fully debated in Parliament, not just decided in the Cabinet room.
UltraVires, I guess I just don’t see why you think it’s undemocratic that the presiding officer of the House should have the power to makes procedural rulings, and exercises that power with a preference for furthering debate on major issues.
To me, it’s a question of separation of powers. The House controls its own business, not the executive. Now if the executive has a firm majority, its members will vote on procedural matters in the House and thus control the agenda - not because the executive controls the House agenda, but because the Members of the House who support the gouvernement will vote in favour of the government’s agenda.
But it’s not always that way. Where the government has a weak majority, or is in a minority position, the House will have greater independent control over its agenda, because the Members may vote against the government’s proposed agenda and substitute their preferred option.
It’s not that Speaker Bercow overruled the Government’s agenda. Rather, he ruled that an amendment proposed by a Member of the Commons was in order and should be debated and voted on by the House. I don’t see how it’s undemocratic for the presiding officer of the legislative branch to have that authority?
I’m glad that Brexit is falling apart, but I still say that May really only had one path forward, which was to ignore the traditional party labels and form a pro-Brexit coalition from the members of all the parties - not permanently, just during the negotiations. You can’t get anywhere when half the people who would vote with you are expected to vote against you because they’re on the opposite team, and half the people that would usually vote with you are against the measure.
And particularly when you have nothing to offer the EU and the EU has a motive to make it hurt.
Ah well. In a last minute panic, they’ll approve something that the EU hands them at the last minute to keep everything from going to compete hell. But I hope that they’ll reverse course instead and just go back to being happy about having the EU to blame for everything wrong in the world.
Life is better with a scapegoat.
By winning the election, the voters wanted the current Government to control the business of the House and propose its own agenda. That is one of the benefits that parliamentary systems have over the US system.
So, say, the Government wants to tackle the problem of childhood obesity. It has experts research the issue and the Government comes up with a plan of: 1) prohibiting X number of calories in all junk food, 2) prohibiting X-Y number of calories in food sold to those under age 16, 3) establishes mandatory physical education classes elementary and middle school, 4) establishes a school lunch program with nutritional food, and 5) have an administrative system where parents must justify, with medical excuses or whatnot, why their child is Z% above their optimal weight.
Now, not that I agree with any or all of those proposals, but we assume that the Government, duly elected by the people, wishes that proposal to be enacted in a fair vote in the Commons. Further suppose that these experts have said that this proposal, through their diligent research, is a “five legged stool” that the effort to combat childhood obesity will not succeed, and in fact will produce harmful results, if one of those legs are removed.
But now suppose that we have backbenchers who are against #1 as it infringes too much on adult choices to eat junk food. Further suppose that a different mix of backbenchers are against #5 as too restrictive on parental rights. Again, further suppose that another mix believe that the age in #2 is too high, that it should be 12 years of age.
So, and please correct me if I am wrong, one of the benefits of a parliamentary system is that a Government can enact this sort of grand social scheme so long as a majority goes along with it. It has the power to say, basically, either vote for the package as a whole or else vote against it. The Speaker seems to have now said that the Government cannot do this. He will allow backbenchers to vote on amendments that will scuttle the package, or else enact one that the Government never proposed and actively does not want.
That seems to insert a check, or alternatively a gridlock, that is present in the U.S. system, but was one of the positives in the UK system. It seems to me, as an uneducated American, to be a step backwards, and yes, undemocratic.
No, they didn’t. Three out of five voters voted against the Tory government at the last election.
A government that secures a majority does, in fact, control the business of the House and gets to propose its own agenda. And one of the characteristics - “benefit” might be too loaded a word - of the British electoral system that a government can do this even when materially more than 50% of voters have voted against them.
But even with this characteristic at work for them, the Tory government couldn’t manage to win a majority. Therefore, they don’t get to control the affairs of the house in the way they could if they could have attracted enough support to win a majority of seats. And this outcome is eminently democratic.
Obviously, in the present circumstances, Parliament has a higher degree of autonomous control than it would if the government had a secure majority. There’s no democratic case for saying that it should be stripped of that control in favour of the executive; the voters could have given the executive that degree of control if they chose to, but they didn’t choose to. We must respect that.
But of course this doesn’t mean that Parliament should exercise its control irresponsibly. The government must function, and Parliament has a responsibility to see that it does.
The government can still say to Parliament “accept this package as a whole or reject it, but do not tinker with it”. Parliament can ignore that, and tinker with the package, but it may be irresponsible to do so. It isn’t necessarily irresponsible to do so.
I don’t think Parliament (or the Speaker) has acted irresponsibly here. Parliament previously gave the government 21 days after any rejection of the Withdrawal Agreement to bring its Plan B to Parliament. But it did this when the government’s intention was to have the vote on the Withdrawal Agreement in early December. Subsequently, the goverment changed its intention and deferred the vote for a month, and it did this through a procedureal manouevre, without seeking the assent of Parliament, even though by doing so it was setting aside an arrangement which it has submitted to Parliament, and secured parliamentary approval for. In that circumstance, it’s eminently reasonable for Parliament to consider whether, a month having been lost by the government’s manouevre, and with a default no-deal Brexit coming on 29 March if no other decision is made, if the Withdrawal Agreement is lost it would still be wise to wait as long as 21 days before turning to Plan B.
So is there a distinction in the UK system between a Minority Government, a Coalition Government, or simple a Government which has a majority? You are correct, the people did not vote for a majority Tory Government, but it did vote for those MPs which formed a coalition to do Government business.
Again, please correct me if I am wrong, and I am not arguing because I do not know, but I was under the impression that a Government was a Government, and if it became so fractured or so wobbly as to not be able to effectively do its business, then it is time for new elections so the people now can elect a Government that can effectively do its business.
I don’t disagree with you that it is reasonable or even preferable for Parliament to consider revising the 21 day time limit. It may be reasonable for Parliament to call a second referendum or to scrap Brexit entirely. My only question/concern was that I thought it was the Government’s call in the first instance to decide whether to hold a vote on these things, the majority view of the Commons notwithstanding.
Even if you aggregate the vote for the Tories and the vote for the DUP which has made the agreement with them that keeps them in power, you still don’t have a majority of the vote, or anything like. Something like 43.3%, I think.
In the Westminster system, a government is a government not because it got a majority of the vote at the last election (as already noted, it frequently didn’t) but because it commands the confidence and support of a majority in the House of Commons. So, the government of the day doesn’t get to control the business of the House because, as the government, it has the right to. It’s more the other way around; it gets to be the government because it has a majority in the House who will support it in votes (which, among other things, means it has effective control over the business of the House, in the sense that it can get its supporters to vote to manage business in the way that it wants).
Formally, no. The government is always accountable to the House, not the other way around, and the House is always in control of its own business. In practice, a government with majority will win votes, and the Commons rules and conventions default to not holding pointless votes, so government motions on the business of the House, once passed, are generally not revisited (unless the government wants them to be revisited) since it would be waste of parliamentary time.
What was different here was that the government had itself effectively revised the motion by deferring the vote on the Withdrawal Agreement for a month, and it had done this without the assent or permission of the House. Which was a pretty strong indication that, on the matter of how this particular business should be handled, it did not command support in the House and knew that it didn’t. Which meant there was a strong case for the Speaker to think that a vote on the “change 21 days to 3 days” amendment would not be won by the government, and therefore allowing it to be discussed and vote on would not be a waste of parliamentary time, but rather an assertion by Parliament of its right to control its own business. And of course the event proved him right.
Does this mean the government is “so wobbly as to not be able to effectively do its business”? Not quite. The business of the government is not, ultimately, dictating the minutiae of the parliamentary day; it’s running the country and getting its policies legislated for. The government lost this procedural vote, but what ultimately matters is whether they can get Parliament to support their substantive brexit policy.
I don’t see why you are saying this. Theresa May’s government will have an opportunity for an up/down vote on their whole package on Tuesday. The consensus is that they will lose the vote.
This loss will not be due to any amendments. They were going to lose the vote anyway. The amendment only addresses what comes next.
The current government is a minority and very weak. They have also failed to come up with a plan that satisfies their own members, never mind anyone else. The government has already failed dismally on Brexit. This is the only reason the speaker has been able to influence the situation - and if the Commons didn’t agree with that, they could have voted down the amendment. They could also vote to get rid of the speaker if they think he is acting ultra vires - but that’s not going to happen.
This is not an ordinary situation. It’s very unusual.
I think the crux of the matter is that Americans like to do things by fixed Rules that apply in all situations. In the UK Parliament, they can (ultimately) make up the rules or change them as they go along. If an extraordinary situation arises, they can deal with it in an extraordinary way.
Again, I want to thank you and all UK posters who have generously tried to educate me on UK politics. Please do not get disheartened because it is working in some cases.
But a few thoughts:
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Your objection to the electoral system seems to argue for an alternative solution. If the fact that a minority of people can elect a majority it government, it seems no different than the debates we have in the US because of the electoral college or the disparate districting for Democrats. Those may be valid points, but I think that for purposes of debate, we should not imply that we don’t have a real democracy, but accept election results while at the same time attempting to change the underlying system if that shows to be the correct way.
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The argument about the Commons having power is very well taken and instructive, but having the Speaker himself, without any knowledge prior to the vote, to simply decide in his unreviewable discretion that a majority of the Commons “may” or “possibly” be in agreement with a proposition, even if he is proven right after the fact, to be most undemocratic and against the will of the people through their election of the Government.
That seems ripe for abuse. If a proposal that the Speaker fears might pass, he can simply declare that the Commons has no interest in it. If it is one that might not have majority support, but he hopes it will, he can calendar it for the reasons you described. The Speaker now has great power, even though the people did not elect him to be Speaker, and the MPs who did only did so because of his neutrality.
- So, if May’s proposal is defeated on Tuesday will that/should that mean a dissolution of the Government and new elections?
Fair point. But the bottom line here is that, in the UK system, governments don’t derive their democratic legitimacy from the support of a majority of the voters, which they often don’t have, but from the support of a majority of the House of Commons, which is taken to to be the democratic representatives of the people. But once you accept that you, can’t argue that the government has a right to control the House of Commons, since that would effectively mean that the government can exercise its control so as to give itself a mandate, regardless of what the members of the House of Commons (or indeed the voters) may think, which is democratically indefensible.
It wasn’t really the Speaker’s job to decide whether the Commons might pass the procedural amendment; just whether they should be allowed to consider and vote on it. There is a convention that this isn’t normally allowed, but the political considerations on which that convention is justified weren’t present on this occasion. It was the Speaker’s job to decide whether that meant the convention should not be followed.
The Speaker’s job has always included defending the rights of Parliament against encroachment by the executive. He made it pretty clear when the government deferred the vote from December to January without seeking parliamentary approval that he thought that was shoddy behaviour. So it’s not entirely surprising that, when this issue arose, his judgment was that Parliament should have the opportunity to reassert control over its business.
The Speaker’s role has always been a powerful one, and all powerful roles are ripe for abuse. As you say, the people didn’t elect the Speaker but, then, they don’t elect the Prime Minister either. And the Speaker is at least elected by the members of the House of Commons (which is more than the Prime Minister can say). If the government can derive its legitimacy from the House, why not the Speaker? And, as for neutrality, the Speaker is supposed to be impartial as between the parties represented in the House, but not in conflicts between parliament and the executive; his job is to defend the privileges and prerogatives of Parliament from suppression or encroachment by the executive.
Probably not. The expectation is the opposition will table a vote of no confidence in the government. If that were passed, the government would resign and an election would follow, but the expectation is that it will not pass.
The Withdrawal Agreement not being passed on Tuesday is not a definitive defeat for the government’s Brexit policy, since the UK doesn’t leave the EU until 29 March, and the government try again to get the WA approved in the meantime. Or it could modify its Brexit policy and seek approval for the modified policy. Basically they can keep trying as long as Parliament doesn’t vote no confidence in the government.
Of course, at some point it becomes politically untenable to keep rejecting the the government’s proposals while still expressing confidence in the government. If Parliament doesn’t vote no confidence, the government can itself throw up its hands and put down a motion for an early general election. That needs a two-thirds majority to pass, but of course the opposition would certain vote for it.
UDS is doing an excellent job of explaining a really complex situation, and I hestitate to jump in, but there’s a wrinkle here that might be worth bearing in mind.
IF a no confidence motion were passed, it wouldn’t immediately lead to an election. There is a 14-day window for a new government that can survive a confidence motion to emerge. That is, if the motion “This House has no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government” is passed, then there will be an election unless the opposite motion (“This House has confidence in Her Majesty’s Government”) is passed within 14 days.
How would such a motion pass (in general terms)? The obvious option is that the PM would go to the rebels in his or her party and twist arms or offer bribes or compromise on policy until they had got people back on board. The alternative is that the Leader of the Opposition could broker a deal with minor parties (or just barely conceivably, rebels from the governing party) such that they could form a functional government. These two approaches would only give very temporary solutions, and an election would be needed to try to create a solid majority in the House, but in the short term they would allow a government to form without an election.
In terms of the current situation, this means that in the event that Tory rebels or the DUP side with Corbyn on a no-confidence motion in May’s government (very unlikely and exceedingly unlikely, respectively) then there would be a window for a formal or informal coalition to take shape that would have a majority to do something about Brexit. So you could see a temporary alliance of pro-Remain and anti-No Deal MPs come together to form a government with the authority to firstly ask for an extension to Article 50 and secondly to call for an election once it was granted. (In theory you could see a coalition to simply rescind A50, but this would be an exceptionally high stakes move to say the least and should really only be thought about for completeness’ sake).
From the point of view of Corbyn, who wants a general election but needs Tory votes to get one, offering an “extend A50 and then go to the polls” coalition may be the best way to win over the anti-No Deal votes he needs. But this is likely career suicide for the rebels, and the fact that we’re discussing it as a possibility means that we’re in a highly unusual environment.
I’ve created a poll over on Elections to predict the outcome of the Brexit vote tomorrow.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=868911