Fury from the SNP when the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, made his controversial ruling, interspersed with angry warnings to his critics to pipe down, that he was taking the Labour amendment on Gaza.
“What is the point of an Opposition Day if it’s going to be met like this?” Owen Thompson (SNP, Midlothian) demanded on a point of order,
The Conservatives were likewise furious, with derisive shouts of “Bring back Bercow” and “You ought to be ashamed of yourself” audible from their benches.
For Hoyle had declared, in the face of much protest, that Standing Order 31, under which, because this day has been allocated to the SNP, they put down the motion for debate, with only the Government allowed to propose an amendment, “reflects an outdated approach”.
The Speaker was now, the House discovered to its astonishment, allowing a vote on Labour’s amendment too: a decision which made Sir Keir Starmer’s task of keeping his followers together much easier.
Feeling ran high, which in many ways is a good thing, for Gaza is an intensely emotive subject. The Commons remains able to feel and express the deep anger an issue arouses outside its walls.
But is power now running towards Labour? Did it lean so heavily on Hoyle that he gave ground when he should have stood firm?
After all, the Clerk of the House had advised the Speaker to stand his ground, while recognising that Hoyle also had the right to reject that advice.
Many at Westminster assume Labour will form the next Government, but one would not have known this from watching Starmer’s attempts at PMQs to establish an ascendancy over Rishi Sunak.
Starmer opened by inviting Sunak “to repeat the allegation” made by the Business Secretary, Kemi Badenoch, “that the former Chair of the Post Office is lying”.
“As the Business Secretary said on Monday,” Sunak began his reply, but then declined to stick to Starmer’s agenda, and said what matters is getting the postmasters compensated, to which end a Bill will soon be brought before the House.
By his dullness and sobriety, the Prime Minister somehow managed to suggest the Leader of the Opposition is playing politics with the issue.
“Have some respect, please,” Starmer said as the Conservative benches began to murmur against him, but he has done little to gain their respect. Nor after today are they likely to respect the Speaker.