Lindsay Hoyle's excuses for ignoring Diane Abbott are beyond ridiculous
Diane Abbott rose to speak 46 times and Lindsay Hoyle ignored her every time. His excuses are beyond ridiculous.
Prime Minister's Questions turned into even more of a farce than usual as the Speaker Lindsay Hoyle repeatedly ignored Diane Abbott as she rose 46 times to try and get a word in about the racist abuse and incitement to kill her from the Tory party’s biggest donor Frank Hester.
A significant portion of PMQs was dedicated to these violent and abusive comments, but Hoyle decided not to let the victim speak, instead leaving it to the likes of Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak to discuss the issue on her behalf.
Rishi Sunak made out that the whole issue should be forgiven and forgotten because the perpetrator has supposedly "apologised".
There's several things wrong with this:
It's not Rishi Sunak's decision whether to accept an apology or not, it's clearly Diane Abbott's.
It's a hell of a stretch to portray Frank Hester's statement about his scandalous comments an "apology", given that it's was more of a defensive and self-serving PR exercise in responsibility evasion than an apology, which didn't even address the main issue that he’d called for an MP to be killed!
And then there's the fact that any ordinary person who hasn’t donated £10 million to the Tory party would never be instantly absolved upon a mealy-mouthed "apology for causing offense" if they'd spewed racist abuse at an MP and called for them to be shot. They'd be the subject of near-universal condemnation and a likely criminal investigation.
Watching Keir Starmer using the scandal to score political points was also stomach churning.
We know that his faction of the Labour Party is keeping Diane Abbott suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party with the intention of booting her out of her constituency at the looming general election, and we know that they did absolutely nothing to punish the Labour insiders who bullied Diane Abbott and spewed dreadful racist abuse about her. This bullying and abuse was referenced in the highly critical Forde Report (see page 83) which Starmer continues to outright ignore.
It’s absolutely nauseating that Hoyle allowed such an obscene spectacle to play out without allowing the victim of the abuse and threats to get a word in as Sunak and Starmer used the scandal to push their own agendas and point score at each other.
The excuses Hoyle’s office came up with afterwards are downright ridiculous.
They claimed that there wasn’t enough time to allow Diane Abbott to speak, however the session ended at 12:35, and as David Allen Green points out, the previous two PMQs went on until 12:39 and 12:43.
Surely 8 minutes would have been enough time for a question and a response, and even if it had taken ten minutes, what would have been the harm if the session had gone on until quarter to one?
The excuse that they "ran out of time" simply does not add up.
The other excuse is even worse. They’re claiming that to call Diane Abbott would have gone against parliamentary procedure!
This fallback on parliamentary procedure is coming from the guy who just weeks ago justified ripping up parliamentary procedure to sabotage the SNP's Gaza ceasefire motion by citing unspecified threats and abuse, by unspecified people, against unspecified MPs.
It was always an absurd justification to cite unsubstantiated claims of threats and abuse as an excuse for ripping up parliamentary procedure to effectively hand the SNP’s opposition day to Keir Starmer and allow him to remove reference to Israel's collective punishment of Palestinian civilians from their ceasefire motion.
But now Hoyle’s citing parliamentary procedure to justify ignoring the victim of threats and abuse against an MP, which is the exact polar opposite position!
It’s interesting that the most obvious beneficiary of both of these glaringly opposite decisions turns out to be Keir Starmer.
Hoyle’s decision to allow Labour to sabotage the SNP ceasefire motion allowed Starmer to avoid a looming Labour Party rebellion against his genocide complicity, and denying Diane Abbott the opportunity to speak prevented her from highlighting her continued suspension from the Parliamentary Labour Party, and the history of horrific racism and bullying she suffered at the hands of Labour Party insiders.
In the space of just a few weeks Hoyle has gone from binning parliamentary procedure citing threats and abuse of MPs, to citing parliamentary procedure as an excuse for not allowing the victim of threats and abuse to speak!
It’s impossible to look at a guy making absolutely polar opposite justifications for his biased and outrageous decisions and think that he’s remotely fit to continue doing such an important job.
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Starmer has his fingerprints all over this debacle, now imagine how he will act if he gets the keys to number 10. He is much more dangerous than the incompetent Tory leaders we have endured for the last 14 years and should he gain a massive majority you can be assured our lives will not improve as he plays the tunes of his paymasters.
From where I sit (Canada), Starmer is looking more and more like Trump. Absolute control of the Party, controlling the House even though not in government, making the party adopt policies that will benefit the very few while campaigning as a man of the people, ... I can understand the need to get rid of the Tories but be careful what you wish for. This may be the time to stop voting for the lesser of two evils - they are both evil and, from an ocean away, it's hard to tell which party and party leader is more evil.