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Getting a little bit tired of the trope that Bercow has been manipulating or breaking Commons rules and precedents in order to thwart no-deal Brexit. It’s just not supported by the facts at all. (1/x)
He did not help to make “Brexit Next Steps” motions amendable. The House did that by voting in a perfectly orderly way for an amendment to a Business of the House motion. That’s on MPs; not the Speaker.
He did not bend the rules when the Government exploited procedure to “pull” the first Meaningful Vote in December. He could quite easily have engaged in shenanigans to insist they first got MPs’ permission to delay. He didn’t.
He did, granted, reach a strained definition of “forthwith” to allow MPs to vote on an amendment in January. But this had no real world effect as amendment was just to insist that the Gov’t brought a motion forward slightly earlier than strictly required because they’d delayed.
His ruling about the “same question” rule (saying the Government couldn’t just ask MPs exactly the same thing again barely a fortnight later) was entirely consistent with practice and precedent. It wasn’t archaic or arcane it was a well established consistently enforced rule.
He did, granted, say something a bit weird about not being able to set aside the rule by a resolution of the House. But it didn’t actually stop the Gov’t from bringing the deal back again, as they *literally did* on 29 March. Nor did it stop them bringing it back as a Bill.
In fact, the Speaker very pointedly *stopped* MPs from keeping control of the order paper by breaking a tied vote against Hilary Benn and in favour of the Government in April.
Bottom line is anything in Parl’t that has served to counteract the risk of no-deal has happened as the majority of MPs wanted it and found a way to work with the existing rules to do what they wanted. Gov’ts of all hues do this all the time. You just don’t like the results here.
