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Notes -
Did the Speaker of the House of Commons alter precedent because he was worried MPs would be murdered if he didn’t?
[Link to BBC live thread]
Parliamentary procedure in Britain is labyrinthine and extremely boring, so I will attempt to summarize briefly the procedure under which the events occurred. To simplify, the Conservative government has a large majority in Parliament, but there are still designated days where opposition parties can put forward motions that will almost certainly never affect government policy but which they want to ‘discuss’ (i.e. use to grandstand to supporters, media and potential voters) in front of the legislature.
Yesterday, it was the Scottish National Party’s turn to discuss a motion calling for (implicitly) a unilateral ceasefire by Israel on Gaza. The SNP’s leader, Humza Yousaf (who is not an MP) has spoken regularly about Palestine, is himself Muslim and has a wife who is Palestinian with family in Gaza. But Scotland itself has only a very small and electorally insignificant Muslim population. The primary reason for the SNP’s motion was that, after various major scandals on everything from transwomen to embezzlement, their grip on Scotland and its fifty parliamentary seats is likely to be significantly weakened at the next general election, with Labour likely to reclaim many seats from them. Labour has not committed itself to a ceasefire in this way, but has called for a “humanitarian pause”, which both sides have admitted is largely a semantic distinction, but a distinction nonetheless. The SNP intended that many pro-Palestinian Labour MPs would vote with them on the motion (which again was seen as having had no chance of actually passing), going against the wishes of their party, making the Labour leader look weak, and hopefully therefore gaining some ground on them ahead of the election.
In a surprise move, the Speaker (who was formerly a Labour MP but must remain officially neutral) allowed Labour to hijack the SNP’s ‘opposition day’ by first allowing a vote on a Labour amendment before the vote on the SNP’s motion. The Labour amendment was largely the same but clarified that Israel ‘could not be expected’ to cease fire until all hostages were released. By convention, one opposition party would not be able to table an amendment to another opposition party’s motion on such a day, only the government can. The procedural details are complicated but essentially the action ensured in practice that the SNP felt their motion wouldn’t come to a vote the way they intended (this is confusing for me, but so much of British parliamentary procedure is essentially arbitrary and malleable that I suppose this is explained by something). The SNP and the Conservatives both walked out in protest (the latter opportunistically, because it allowed them to sidestep the whole ceasefire vote for now, and because they may have been worried their amendment wouldn’t pass), and harshly criticized the speaker, Hoyle, who it turned out was warned by his own clerks that this would happen.
But the question remains why Hoyle, who despite being ex-Labour has retained a relatively positive reputation in the House, accepted Labour’s request for an unprecedented amendment insertion into the SNP’s opposition day motion. What did Starmer (the Labour leader) say to him? This morning, rumors swirled that Starmer had ‘extorted’ Hoyle in some way. There are two ways of interpreting that allegation, if it has any substance.
The first is that Starmer transparently reminded Hoyle of the fact that the speaker is re-elected by each incoming parliament, and that Starmer will almost certainly be the next Prime Minister with a large majority at his disposal. And ultimately, whatever the reason, the act avoided any nasty Labour infighting over the SNP motion that would otherwise have been expected. This seems to be the SNP allegation, that Hoyle did Starmer a political favor both to take the wind out of the SNP’s sails and to avoid discontent in his own party, in exchange for job security at the next election. (Note that if Hoyle was removed as Speaker, he would presumably return to being a Labour MP under Starmer).
The second possibility is darker, and has been alleged openly by many Conservative politicians today. Supposedly, Hoyle is a mild-mannered man who considers himself responsible in part for the safety of MPs. Per this narrative Starmer supposedly showed or related to him death threats made by Muslim constituents to Labour MPs and their families if they didn’t vote for a ceasefire, and suggested on that basis that Hoyle must allow the amendment or, presumably, any assassinations of MPs would be on him. It is only two years since the last MP was assassinated by an Islamist constituent, who explicitly said he did so because he held said MP responsible for the death of Muslims, so Hoyle allegedly went over the advice of his clerks to try to prevent it happening again by letting Labour table their amendment. Of course, this in and of itself could easily just be a manipulation tactic by Labour.
As it is likely in neither Hoyle nor Starmer’s interest to reveal what happened (and if either did, it is questionable whether they could be trusted), the events - for now - are likely to remain the subject of great speculation.
One thing that I don't understand is how countries like France, with a larger and often more radicalised muslim population, doesn't seem to have the same problems. Sweden also has a larger muslim population (in proportionate terms) and while Jews in Sweden are under concurrent attack, at least elite institutions seem to weather the pressure fairly well. Their PM is openly saying things like immigrants from MENA have problems with antisemitism and even questioning their loyalty.
Perhaps it's a combination of two things. First, many Islamist radicals are not poor and downtrodden but often well-educated and from relatively more affluent families. Britain's status as a magnet for relatively more prosperous migrants from non-EU sources could perhaps account for this. Second, perhaps the British state itself has been a bit more hands-off rather than the forceful French assimilationist approach. I can't say that it seems like the French have succeeded with their attempts to assimilate these groups, but perhaps an inadvertent side benefit is that they have greater control over various radicals.
As a final note, in a sane society these remote Middle-Eastern squabbles should not have been a major issue in the domestic politics of various Western countries. But we are now well past that point in Europe.
The UK chose to get involved in this particular conflict a hundred years ago. Don't blame this on Muslim immigrants.
And yet, despite visiting great injustice upon Muslim lands (freeing Greece, invading and occupying the Ottoman capital, ruling the numerical majority of the world’s Muslims from West Africa to India to Malaya, arguably giving Israel to the Jews) it was only after mass immigration started that things like this began happening domestically.
The fate of the newly liberated Arab lands after World War I was most certainly a political issue in the UK. There was much debate both among politicians and in the public. The British public was apparently very sympathetic due to the Arabs' contribution to the victory so official British support for Zionism was in fact very controversial, as was the Anglo-French partition and occupation. All this with the number of Muslims actually living in the UK being a rounding error.
It was a minor internal issue due to the longstanding Arabist sympathies of some upper class British in the foreign office, sure. But few of any people were getting killed about it in Britain, it wasn’t a civil conflict.
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