At today's Prime Minister's Questions, the Speaker intervened time and again to silence the characteristic hustle and noise of parliament, and to cut off those -including the Prime Minister - he deemed to be speaking off topic. Aptly describing it as "the dullest PMQs of the year ... [p]erhaps for several years", Lloyd Evans over at Coffee House condemns John Bercow's increasing belligerence. This Speaker is obsessed with the notion that the public hates the sight of rowdy parliamentary debates, and clearly sees it as his job to prevent people having to meet with any such thing. Evans notes what it is that Bercow is putting at risk:
"One of the strange glories of the house is that it’s far too small to seat every MP. Popular debates, where eager members crowd into the cramped aisles, have the feverish hot-house mood of a cockfight or an illegal boxing match. Every head cranes forward to catch a glimpse of the action. This is healthy for politics. At its best the Commons can replicate the exhilarating unpredictability of a public meeting during a time of national crisis. And a PM who can command the chamber in full spate gains the respect of every side. The house is there to examine the mettle of its leaders under conditions of maximum stress. This means shouting. It means insults. Sometimes it means mayhem too. So be it. This is what politics is – civil war refined into rhetoric. We need to see it in its natural condition."
It's a great article, and well worth reading in full.
I worry about what our parliament will be like if the Speaker manages to get his way here. No one would object to a Speaker who intervened to ensure every question and answer is heard, but Bercow's interpretation of his role goes much further than his predecessors'.
The frequency and venom of Bercow's interventions suggests that in his ideal parliament, everyone would sit in silence as time and again a backbencher fires a quick question, and then the minister gives a quick answer. That's it.
People who said ridiculous things would no longer face sustained guffaws. Members would be prevented from devastating an argument by heckling - or from winning an argument by answering hecklers. Those who managed to capture the mood of the house would no longer be cheered loudly - nor, probably, allowed enough time or range in what they are permitted to discuss to capture that mood in the first place.
Does the public - does anyone - really want that kind of parliament? It doesn't sound much like the chamber of a vibrant democracy to me.
