Within the next 24 hours it is entirely possible that the House of Commons could be without a Speaker. I’m not predicting it will happen, but it’s not impossible to imagine Sir Lindsay Hoyle standing up at 2.30pm to announce that he feels he has lost the confidence of the House and therefore he feels he has no alternative but to offer his resignation. You could see his logic. Seventy MPs have signed an Early Day Motion calling for a debate on his future, which essentially means they have no confidence in him. Thirty of those seventy are SNP MPs. He may well come to the conclusion that his authority is spent if he has lost the confidence of most of the MPs in the third largest party in the House.
I hope he sticks it out, though. It’s not enough to be a nice and decent man, which he is. But he’s been a good Speaker in many ways. He made a big mistake on Wednesday. Of that, there is little doubt, but does he really deserve to lose his job over one mistake? Do any of us? Politics has always been cruel, but for MPs to oust him over this would be needlessly cruel. Bercow survived far worse, lest we forget.
The only way I could contemplate supporting moves for his removal would be if it were proven that he bowed to pressure from a senior Labour figure, to take the decision he did. He denies it. Keir Starmer denies it. Yet the account given in today’s Sunday Times lends credence to the view that conversations in that direction did indeed take place. I suspect it will never be proven one way or the other, but if it did happen, and The Speaker resigns, his might not be the only resignation that would be called for.