Can the next Speaker put parliament back together again?

MPs who aren’t in the process of defecting to the Liberal Democrats are using their conference recess to phone around their colleagues canvassing for the next Commons Speaker. Lindsay Hoyle is, according to YouGov, the favourite to win, but Harriet Harman and Chris Bryant are also running strong campaigns, along with Meg Hillier. Then there are the Tory candidates: Eleanor Laing, Sir Henry Bellingham, Shailesh Vara and Sir Edward Leigh.

All of them are promising to stand up for parliament, albeit in rather different ways. Leigh, for instance, promises to ‘seek by my conduct and dress to submerge my personality into the office and keep business flowing’ (which if nothing else is an interesting choice of verbs from an MP who likes to start every day with a swim in the Serpentine). Harman argues that she’ll ensure women’s voices are heard properly, and that she might break up some of the traditions in the Commons whereby you are called to speak in a debate in order of seniority, which she feels doesn’t respect the outside experience new MPs may bring to the House.