This afternoon the House of Commons will elect a new chair to head up the team of people who enforce its rather antiquated debating club rules. They dress him or her up in funny clothes so that they can do this better, and give them a funny name “Speaker” as well.
If we are to believe the politicians and the press, today’s election is going to be the signal for a new reform of all that is ill in the present system. It will restore the public’s trust in parliament, reinvigorate democracy, and bring world peace in our time. Accordingly it gets solemn po-faced leaders in all four of the broadsheets: Times, Guardian, Independent and Telegraph. Though kudos to Tom Harris for poking fun at it.
Clayboy hates to be curmudgeonly about this, but if this office were remotely capable of all the hopes being vested in it, then perhaps some first-rank politicians might have stood for it. After all, it is almost guaranteed for as long as the holder wishes to stay, and by convention opposing parties do not stand in the Speaker’s constituency. (The first thing that ought to be reformed in a representative democracy!) So, if this job really could make a major difference to the present and future of democracy in the UK, why are all the candidates second-rate?
If, for example, David Davis (Con), Vince Cable (LibDem) or Alan Milburn (Lab) were standing for the office, one might believe it could achieve something. However they and those like them who are both ambitious and able, feel that their ambition and ability will be best fulfilled elsewhere. Nothing could so stunningly prove that the MPs and their journalists are simply caught up in their goldfish bowl of artificial excitement, and that today’s election is, in reality, going to be largely irrelevant to the rest of the country.
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Say it quietly Clayboy, but you have just uncovered the biggest misconception about this whole speaker debacle… the Speaker is really does not have that much power when it comes to reform, the only people who can really make a difference are the PM, the whips, the leader of the opposition and leader of the House – and even of those, it really comes down to the PM.
Who’d want to be Speaker if you had the prospect of a serious role in government in the coming years?
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