Friday 27 November 2009

Challenge not the Speaker - why not?


There is much talk of the new UKIP leader Lord Pearson and what his predecessor intends to do to the current speaker namely, shock and horror, challenge the "convention" and stand in his constituency.

Some Tories feel this is wrong, some Labourites feel this is wrong, some other people who's party simple has no function at all (LibDems) think this is wrong and some other people also think it is wrong. They say that tradition and procedure dictates that the Speaker should not be challenged in his own constituency. Really?




Labour challenged Speaker Bernard Wetherill in 1987.

But what is more it has somehow become an unspeakable dogma to question the incumbent Speaker, who flipped homes as much as anyone else and indulged in all the little privileges bestowed upon MPs at our expense. Sure they need freebies to do their job, but the Expenses scandal was too much and they know it was wrong and so do we.

The current Speaker John Bercow was elected because Labour made it so, yet again they put party before country in order to damage the Tories. I am as usual lost for words when it comes to describing my contempt for the Labour party - I simply cannot find them. Suffice to say that a man who has been elected speaker on the back of a Tory Opposition ploy conducted by Labour, deserves not to hold that esteemed position for he has not earned the trust and respect which is bestowed upon the post by his fellow Rt. Hon. Members.

Speaker Bercow is not the victim, the Tories are not the victims, we are the victims.

1 comment:

All Seeing Eye said...

I have no idea where this concept of a convention has come from. Labour and the Libs have regularly contested the Speakers constituency and it's only really been the Tories who have imposed this restriction upon themselves.

The Speakers chair has fallen into disrepute over the last few decades because of the poor candidtates who have occupied it. I've never understood the love-in everyone had with that ex-Tiller Girl, and Gorbals Mick just reduces me to incoherent spluttering. Similarly Bercow is a joke.

I must confess, though, politics aside, to finding his wife incredibly hot.

If the polls locally start pointing to Bercow in trouble it'd be an interesting General Election sub-plot to speculate on the replacement Speaker.