Candidates for speaker aren't supposed to campaign are they? It's all hushed encounters in dark bars and quiet corners, soundings being taken on behalf of others, significant glances and unspoken words. There aren't really supposed to to be candidates even, in the sense that we understand "candidate" with people making a positive case for themselves. Somebody emerges after a vote and is dragged ever so reluctantly to the Chair (although Michael Martin didn't look that reluctant on the footage). This might explain why David Davis, Vince Cable and others are being so robustly reluctant, at this stage anyway.
But that's all seriously old politics now. Very closed-source. The Speaker had to go, because he didn't have the authority to restore public trust in the House of Commons. The next Speaker must have genuine credibility with the public as well as amongst MPs. That's not going to happen if candidates and MPs simply allow the process to be conducted internally amongst themselves. Candidates have the opportunity over the next month to do it all very differently: to engage with the public; to set out the principles they would apply and the reforms they would make; to be open to scrutiny and question; to seek open support from the public and from fellow MPs; to be, in a meaningful and transparent sense, candidates.
It is therefore shocking to see the Daily Mirror declare already that Labour MPs are likely to vote en masse for John Bercow. This is before we know who the contenders might be, let alone anything about what they might think. There is no positive case for him, at the moment. If the report is true, it shows that the parliamentary Labour Party still doesn't understand what open politics is all about, or how recent events have changed the way the Commons must operate. The new Speaker needs to have genuine cross-party support; this smacks of partisanship, even whipping. They know full well that John Bercow will have to work very hard indeed to persuade many of his Conservative colleagues that he would be suitable. John Bercow would be well-advised to distance himself from this, and all the party leaders and chief whips should publicly affirm that they will leave this contest to individual MPs.
Frank Field grasped what is needed immediately and instinctively. He has announced his interest on his blog, and will be setting out his manifesto over the next 10 days:
The next Speaker will only be the most powerful in history if he or she is elected on a programme that points to the next phase in our Parliamentary development. I have been asked whether I will throw my hat into the ring. I am thinking about that as I accept that there maybe too many colleagues on my own side who would block any such possibility.
I will therefore spend the next ten days or so developing the details of a programme, and I shall be happy to support anybody who is more likely than I to drive through the programme of reform. I will make an announcement on whether I am a candidate after we return from the Parliamentary recess.
He has set the lead that others need to follow. Not just the candidates, but all MPs. This election for the Speaker needs to be conducted in a very different way to the ones that have gone before.
This will be the first time that the Speaker is elected by secret ballot, following the shambolic scenes in 2001. Curiously enough, I wonder if that will now work against transparency and in favour of the whips; it will be harder to demonstrate that the House has divided on party lines if we don't know how individual MPs have voted.
1.30 update:
A further thought: how about all candidates being interviewed on Newsnight, or appearing on Question Time?
