O VOO DO CORVO

 

https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/london-playbook/saved-by-the-bell/

By STEFAN BOSCIA

TGIF: House of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle will limp into the weekend after what was surely the worst week of his political career. But he might just be able to see some light at the end of the tunnel. Nearly 70 MPs are now calling for a no-confidence vote in the speaker, but the weekend could provide enough space to allow things to simmer down in SW1.

 

Losing steam: Most MPs are heading back to their constituencies today — if they haven’t already — which could slow down Tory and SNP plotting to take down Hoyle. Momentum to oust the speaker palpably slowed throughout Thursday and an early day motion by Tory MP Will Wragg calling for a no-confidence vote in Hoyle is currently stuck on 67 signatures — which likely isn’t enough to push Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt to sanction a vote on the speaker.

 

Quick rewind: All this began after Hoyle upended parliamentary precedent on Wednesday by allowing both Labour and the government to add amendments to an SNP motion calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. That got Labour out of a jam by allowing the party to avoid an embarrassing internal row over the Israel-Gaza war. Tory and SNP MPs cried foul, and suggested Hoyle was doing his old party a favor, leading to some of the most vitriolic scenes in parliament for years.

 

Everybody look over Keir: Senior ministers have been unwilling to publicly call for Hoyle’s removal, with figures like Leveling Up Secretary Michael Gove and Foreign Office Minister Andrew Mitchell rallying around the speaker. CCHQ-sanctioned attacks have instead focused on Labour and its leader Keir Starmer. A Tory MP told The Times’ lobby team that Hoyle was either “threatened by Labour with being voted out of office or he gave way to Starmer pleading with him to get them off the hook.” Starmer “categorically” denied threatening Hoyle and LOTO denies that anyone else from Labour threatened the speaker.

 

Last chance saloon: A former Tory minister tells the i’s lobby team that Hoyle can’t “make any more mistakes” or do “anything that could be interpreted as partisan” if he wants to survive.

 

Moving on: If Hoyle was playing the traditional 10 p.m. Westminster bubble game of watching the front pages drop on X last night, he will have breathed a sigh of relief. None of the national papers splash on his troubles today, with much of the coverage now focusing instead on the awful abuse MPs are receiving and the recent rise in antisemitism.  Hoyle, of course, insists he was only ever trying to protect MPs from the increasing amount of abuse and threats being directed at them.

 

GRIM READING: The papers are full of bleak anecdotes from MPs and staffers on the types of personal threats and abuse that are now commonplace. One minister told The Times’ Aubrey Allegretti that they would not stand at the next election because the threats had become too much for their husband. Former Tory Minister Vicky Ford told MPs yesterday that she was preparing to give “a personal statement to the police on the latest individual who thinks that members of this House are fair game to be harassed, stalked and threatened.”

 

Deteriorating circumstances: My PO`LITICO colleague Esther Webber has a long-read out today on how MPs from all parties are finding the security situation intolerable. Tory MP Stephen Crabb tells her that “it does feel as if things are deteriorating,” particularly because of the intensity of protests over Gaza.

 

This is not normal: One Labour staffer told Sky News’ Jennifer Scott and Alex Rogers that they feel like a “bodyguard” for their MP and that they now “walk him home.” The pair also report that an effigy and body bags were left outside the constituency office of one MP last November, after parliament first voted on a Gaza cease-fire.

 

Liz backs Lindsay: Former Prime Minister Liz Truss (more on her later) told GB News that she wanted to see security beefed up for MPs, while also backing Hoyle to stay in the job. “We need parliamentarians to be able to speak the truth and yet they’re being threatened, and they’re being bullied, and I want to see a step up of security for MPs,” she said.

 

Protective ring around parliament: Crossbench peer John Woodcock, the government’s independent adviser on political violence, is calling for a protest exclusion zone around parliament to help alleviate the problem. Woodcock is also calling for these “buffer zones” to be put up around MPs’ constituency surgeries and council chambers. The Telegraph’s Dominic Penna has the story.

 

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH: The front pages of the the Express and the Mail called out the Met for not doing more to punish protesters that beamed the pro-Palestinian “from the river to the sea” slogan onto Big Ben on Wednesday night. The slogan is seen by many as antisemitic.

 

Haven’t heard from her in a while: Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman claims in a Telegraph op-ed that “the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-semites are in charge now.” “They have bullied the Labour Party, they have bullied our institutions, and now they have bullied our country into submission,” she writes.

 

He agrees: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made somewhat similar, albeit far less inflammatory, comments yesterday as he told broadcasters that “we should never let extremists intimidate us to change the way parliament works.”

 

Aaaaaand back to the election: Speaking of Sunak, the PM has an op-ed out in the Mail today just before his speech at the Wales Conservative Conference in Llandudno at 10.30 a.m. Sunak slates Welsh Labour’s record in government, particularly on health and farming, calling the country “Labour’s laboratory.” A Labour aide said  Sunak can hardly talk as he is “presiding over the biggest fall in living standards since the Second World War.”