Picking a female Speaker will be tempting for MPs. But Harriet Harman is the wrong choice.
Not for the first time, it struck me last week what a good thing it is that so few Brits watch the Parliament Channel. As a democrat (and a journalist) I should want the public to be as interested and engaged in politics as possible. But if ordinary people witnessed what happened in the Chamber last week, I can’t help thinking there would be riots on the streets.
Even seasoned observers (who one would think might be immune to the awfulness) watched through their fingers as fully grown men and women clambered to Instagram the infantile “Silence” protest – and it took a strong stomach to get through the Bercow love-in without switching off in disgust. Whatever your politics, it’s deeply unedifying to watch MPs who’ve complained endlessly about how terrible it is that they have no time to talk about important matters of state spend nearly two hours fawning over the Speaker, especially when their speeches can barely be heard over braying, jeering and insider jokes courtesy of their public schoolboy colleagues. Then there was the singing, about which the less said the better…
As the “face of Parliament”, as it were, the new Speaker will have a window of opportunity to change the public’s mind about what goes on in Westminster. So politicians will have to think very carefully indeed about who it should be.
So far, there are eight candidates in the running: Lindsay Hoyle, Harriet Harman, Chris Bryant, Meg Hillier, Shailesh Vara, Eleanor Laing, Henry Bellingham, and Edward Leigh. Though of course, it’s worth bearing in mind that at this stage in the last race Bercow was an outside choice, it’s safe to say that Hoyle and Harman are the frontrunners, and chances are it will end up as a race between the pair of them.
Those championing Harriet Harman argue, relatively convincingly, that John Bercow’s replacement should be a woman. “What we do in our parliament” wrote Nicky Morgan and Gloria De Piero in the Times back in April, “sends a message not just to women and men in our country but around the world too. There are now women MPs in nearly every parliament across the globe, but they are on far from equal terms. It will give them — and the women in their countries — a huge boost if our country, the ‘mother of parliaments’ chooses a woman.” Morgan and De Piero didn’t go quite as far as to suggest that a woman might also be more effective than a man at dealing with the toxic culture of bullying and sexual harassment in Westminster, but it was certainly implied.
They are right to suggest that the Speaker of the Commons shouldn’t be yet another besuited, Oxbridge educated, Establishment man: the country has had quite enough of those. But Harriet Harman would be an equally poor choice. The Commons feels unrepresentative not only because it has the air of an old boys’ club – though it does – but also because it is packed with Remainers who, as we are all too aware, don’t represent half the country. John Bercow is now seen by everyone as an integral member of the “Remain Alliance”, rather than an impartial chairman – and even in countries where the Speakership is a party political appointee, he/she doesn’t normally behave like that. Harriet Harman, described by Andrew Adonis himself as the “John Bercow continuity candidate” has been very open about her Remain credentials, and Leavers would find it difficult to shake off suspicions that she has an agenda.
If the Speaker is supposed to show ordinary people that Parliament is for them too, then picking another posh southerner would also be unwise. We hear a lot in the media about women hitting the glass ceiling in their careers, but as Amol Rajan’s excellent programme “How to Break Into The Elite” made clear, class is just as much – if not more – of a barrier to success. Harriet Harman, the daughter of a Harley Street physician and a graduate of the prestigious St Paul’s Girls’ School in London, is the epitome of the London Metropolitan Elite, and it’s hard to believe that hard-grafting Leave voters in the North of England would see her in the Speaker’s Chair and feel reassured that British politicians represent them.
Politicians bruised and scarred from the #MeToo era will be naturally inclined to pick a woman to replace John Bercow. But on this occasion, they should ignore their instincts. Deputy Speaker Lindsay Hoyle, with his bracing Northern accent and impeccable record of non-partisan chairing (he’s the only MP who never revealed which way he voted in the referendum), is quite clearly the man for the job. And if politicians want to stop Parliament becoming a national embarrassment, they should give it to him without further ado.
