Why the Commons Speaker’s ‘sent in error email’ starkly exposes his unwise love of the limelight

WeLL, this is all very odd. A few days ago, Members of Parliament received their first communication of the year from the office of the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle.

After declaring that he hoped they had enjoyed a ‘ restful recess’, MPs were informed that ‘ as part of Speaker-led diplomacy’, on January 10 the Commons would be ‘flying the Palestine flag in honour of [the] Palestine Ambassador’.

They were also told that on the same afternoon, at ‘ 15.30-16.00’, the Speaker would be having a meeting in Parliament with the ‘Palestine Ambassador’.

The first the wider world knew about this was on Friday when it was revealed on the Twitter/ X account of Policy exchange, Westminster’s most influential political think-tank.

It observed: ‘ Should the Speaker be committing the entire House of Commons to such a controversial position on the current conflict? What is Speaker-led diplomacy? Is it appropriate in this case?’

All good questions. To which the Speaker’s office rapidly responded: ‘ A routine internal planning email was sent in error. We can confirm no meeting with the Palestinian Ambassador is scheduled to take place.’

Later, it tried a slightly different tack: ‘Following a routine diary review meeting this morning, it became clear that the Speaker could no longer attend due to other diary pressures … he hopes to reschedule when diaries allow.’

Farce

There was no word about the flying of the ‘Palestine flag’ at the Commons. (Not that MPs will be unfamiliar with it, as for days on end, pro- Palestinian demonstrators have been waving it around Westminster, while shouting slogans which have, at times, given British Jews cause to fear for their safety).

What a farce. Apart from anything else, there is no such person as ‘the Palestine Ambassador’. No British government has recognised ‘Palestine’ as a state: it has a Mission here, led by Husam Zomlot, but no embassy, and no Ambassador to present credentials to the monarch.

even if we accept the claim of a ‘routine planning email sent in error’, it is astonishing that the Speaker’s Office does not know this. If you are going to have something called ‘Speaker-led diplomacy’, it would not be a bad idea to understand the most basic fact about the diplomatic status of Mr Zomlot.

I spoke at the weekend to Sir Stephen Laws, now a senior fellow at Policy exchange and who was previously First Parliamentary Counsel. In all those years in that role of advising on Parliamentary procedure, he told me, he had never heard of the term ‘Speaker-led diplomacy’.

Something like it has long existed in the United States, but the U.S. Constitution parcels out foreign relations to both the executive and legislative branches, as part of the ‘separation of powers’.

The Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives is not just the parliamentary leader of the House, but also second in the line of succession, after the Vice-President, should the President become incapacitated.

In this country, diplomacy is solely the responsibility and duty of the elected government. It is not even a parliamentary function, let alone an area of responsibility for the Speaker’s office.

Given that the Speaker, by convention, ‘has no tongue with which to speak or eyes with which to see other than as directed by the House’, it is, in any case, not for Sir Lindsay to take a ‘diplomatic’ initiative which might repel many unconsulted Members of Parliament who have their own strong opinions.

The trouble is that Sir Lindsay, while a welcome breath of fresh air after his toxic predecessor, John Bercow — who treated a number of his staff in the Commons vilely and who allowed his opposition to Brexit to affect his supposedly impartial decisions in the Chair — is rather too keen on getting his own picture in the papers, his own name in the news.

When he was an ordinary backbench Labour MP, this would have been perfectly normal conduct. Although he took it a bit too far in 1997, when he persistently asked the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to make a statement about whether any ‘British security agents’ were involved in the Paris car crash which killed Diana, Princess of Wales.

A couple of years ago, Government papers were released about this, showing a No. 10 official warning Blair that Hoyle was ‘ a publicity-mad loony’. The PM wrote to Hoyle in less disparaging tones but telling him his campaign was ‘ridiculous’ and ‘ deeply distressing’ to the Princess’s family.

Much more recently, as Speaker, Hoyle was himself ridiculed when he declared that the funeral of the late Queen elizabeth would be ‘the most important event that the world will ever see’. It may well have been the most important event in which Sir Lindsay will ever have taken part, but that is not quite the same thing.

And it was perhaps unwise of the Speaker, last September, in an interview with the BBC, to say of the then recent chaos at the heart of the British Government: ‘ Who would have thought that we’d end up like a South American banana republic?’

I’m not suggesting that this showed any open political bias on Hoyle’s part — he is innocent of that — but, again, it gave the impression that he wanted to be a star on the field, when his role is solely that of umpire (or referee, if you prefer).

In fact, his unfortunate business with the Palestinian flag is linked to a pet project which Hoyle’s office has dubbed ‘The Speaker’s Flagpoles’. In 2021, he decided that three flagpoles should be installed in New Palace Yard (highly prominent on the Parliamentary estate).

His office put out a statement at the time, pronouncing grandiloquently: ‘The Speaker regularly meets with international dignitaries and visitors, a key component in his role in leading the UK’s parliamentary diplomacy. When these meetings take place at the House of Commons, the flag of their country will also be flown.’

However, the same press release, illustrated by a photograph of Hoyle standing in front of the new flagpoles, alongside four members of the Armed Forces, also said that flags would be flown to mark ‘significant national events … such as Lancashire Day’. I suppose this was meant to be funny, as Sir Lindsay is a proud Lancastrian.

Insensitive

But these are serious matters. And, in the case of the mooted flying of the Palestinian flag, the timing was peculiarly insensitive, and not just because of the war in the Middle east.

For on Wednesday, January 10 — the day, the MPs were told, that the Palestinian colours were to be raised on the ‘Speaker’s Flagpoles’ — is also the date of the third reading of the economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill.

This measure, led by the Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove, is designed to prevent local councils and other publiclyfunded bodies from ‘pursuing their own foreign policy agendas’.

A specific target of the legislation is councils engaging in the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions campaign, which seeks to block purchases of Israeli-linked goods.

The point of this measure, in part, is to emphasise that foreign policy is the preserve of the elected Government of the day, not local councillors with their own particular views of international developments which are none of their business (at least, not in any official capacity).

exactly the same applies to the Speaker of the House of Commons.