What's it all about, Lindsay?

An allegation of war crimes in Gaza? Or procedural impropriety in Westminster?

The guru of Hollywood script-writing, Robert McKee, tells aspiring writers: “If the scene is about what the scene is about, you’re in deep [trouble].” His point is that powerful drama is played out through sub-text.

McKee would have approved of the scenes from the House of Commons on Wednesday evening. MPs were furious with the Speaker of the House – a dispute that has not yet been resolved as I write this – but let no one think that the dispute had anything to do with what the MPs were shouting about. You have to pick through several levels of discourse and nuance to get to the real story.  

The House was debating the situation in Gaza and, in particular, whether to call for a ceasefire. There is very little in the world today that matches the gravity of the circumstances in Gaza. But, so far as the MPs were concerned, that was just the context for the row. It is certainly not what the uproar was about.

MPs were ostensibly objecting to the order in which the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, had specified that alternative ceasefire options were to be voted on. But that wasn’t what the upset was about, either. (Yes, I know, it’s widely reported that the problem was that the Speaker broke with precedent by allowing a Labour amendment to the motion. But, as we shall see, Labour’s proposal wouldn’t have caused an upset if the Speaker had sequenced the votes differently. So allowing the amendment itself was not the cause of the problem.)

So, if the pandemonium wasn’t about Gaza or the ceasefire, or about the Speaker’s departure from precedent to allow Labour’s amendment, and if the sequencing of the vote triggered the row, but that wasn’t what the row was about … what the devil was it about?

Quite simply, it was all about an attempt to embarrass the Labour Party that the Speaker had blocked.

[Flashback to around four hours earlier. The Gaza debate is about to begin …]

This was an “Opposition Day” debate - one of the few days in the year when the Government doesn’t pick the agenda. More particularly, it was a day devoted to the Scottish National Party (“SNP”) the second party of opposition behind Labour.  The SNP are granted only three days each year when they are able to choose the motion for debate.

The motion they chose was ostensibly one which called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Israel. But there was more to it. Another 107 words more, in fact, ranging across the number of Palestinian refugees, shock and distress at the death toll, condemnation of a possible military assault, and calls for the release of the hostages. But that wasn’t quite it. The SNP included two words - “collective punishment” - which amount to describing Israel’s behaviour as a war crime.  

Maybe the SNP genuinely believes that Israel is guilty of a war crime. Many people do. And many, including lawyers who specialise in war crimes, say otherwise. At the very least, the lawyers say, it is too early to tell. And, in the House of Commons, there was no chance that there would be anything other than a resounding defeat for a motion that accused Israel of war crimes even if the SNP voted for it. Take those two words out and the motion would have been passed.

But the SNP weren’t trying to get their motion passed. As an Opposition Day motion, the outcome does not dictate national policy. (And, even if it did, the UK Government’s policy on a ceasefire in Gaza is going to have minimal effect on the Israeli government and none whatsoever on Hamas.)

Opposition parties generally use their days to inflict embarrassment on their opponents. And that is what this was about. Just like so many of the modern-day political journalists who don’t conduct interviews with the intention of eliciting information – instead, they pose "Gotcha" questions with the aim of making the politician in front of them look bad – so too the opposition parties use their day in the House to cause political damage to others. Instead of an exchange of views which might inform the public and influence government policy, opposition parties frequently select a motion that will cause discomfort to their opponents one way or another.

Hence the SNP’s choice of this debate. A motion in the UK Parliament that labelled Israel as a war criminal would have split the Labour Party - some voting for, most voting against. It would have caused trouble for the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, who is keen for his parliamentary party all to vote the same way on this matter. Trouble is what the SNP wanted. And that is what the Speaker of the House denied them when he decided that the first vote would be on Labour’s wording, not the SNP’s.

Under parliamentary debating rules, Labour’s alternative wording was an “amendment” to the motion, not a second motion for debate. By voting on the amendment first, it was guaranteed that it would pass and, thereby, strike out the SNP’s words – including the words that called Israel’s actions a war crime – and replace the SNP’s words with Labour’s. The SNP’s words would never be voted on. Dissident Labour MPs would not have the opportunity to vote on the war crime wording because no MPs would. Sir Keir Starmer would have been spared the risk of, and any embarrassment arising from, his party being split on this issue.

With the SNP’s gambit on the verge of failure, the Conservative Party appears to have tried to rescue matters. As the party of Government, they were entitled to have an amendment of their own. Under the rules of Opposition Day procedure, the Government’s amendment was to have been called last if the opposition motion had failed (and it would not have been called at all if the opposition motion had passed - more on that below).

The Government withdrew its own amendment. The Government Minister announcing the decision, Penny Mordaunt, gave the reason that “the Government do not have confidence that they will be able to vote on their own amendment”. That made little sense. The amendment was never guaranteed to have been voted upon. Withdrawing it made it certain that it wouldn’t. Leaving it on the table would have left the possibility open.

A more plausible explanation of the Government’s decision was revealed by the intervention of a backbench Conservative MP, Dame Karen Bradley. She seemed to think that, by removing the Government amendment, the SNP motion would go back to first place in the queue. As Chair of the Procedures Committee, Dame Karen might know how these things are supposed to work. She may also have been clued up on the Government’s reason for withdrawing their wording. But Dame Karen was wrong.¹ Or at least the Deputy Speaker (who by now had taken over chairing the debate) thought she was. The Deputy Speaker maintained that the Labour wording must still be voted on first.  

That is when the leader of the SNP lost his rag.

A few minutes later, his party and many members of the Conservative Party walked out in protest.

Where has this spectacle left us? The Labour Party avoided the voting embarrassment it feared, but they now face a different embarrassment in the form of accusations from a senior BBC political journalist, strongly denied by Labour, that, in private, Labour MPs had threatened to bring the Speaker down if he did not help them out. Whether or not he was threatened by Labour on Wednesday, Sir Lindsay Hoyle’s position as Speaker is under threat from a different direction today although, at the time of writing, he remains in the role. Commons procedures are being openly talked about as unfit for purpose in the modern day – described as “hopeless for deciding on more than two options” by the Director of the Institute for Government.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, the fighting continues.

1. The rules are somewhat impenetrable. A BBC journalist tried to sum up the position at the start of the debate when the Government and the Labour Party both had their amendments on the table. The formal rule on sequencing amendments is here. It’s far from clear what it means when read on its own, but it seems to say nothing in support of Karen Bradley’s argument for a change in sequence if the Government withdraws its own amendment.