It was hardly a surprise that this afternoon John Bercow ruled out allowing the government to bring back its meaningful vote on Brexit. Still less of a surprise that this ruling took up nearly an hour in the Commons of points of order from MPs on all sides making points which changed the minds of no-one, and certainly not the Speaker.
The Speaker’s argument was as the one the Tories had been preparing for over the weekend: he ruled that it would be ‘repetitive and disorderly’ to hold a second vote on the same motion. What they perhaps hadn’t prepared for was the Speaker doing a series of impersonations of former parliamentary greats such as Tony Benn and Willie Whitelaw. Nevertheless, the session went well for almost everyone there.
The Conservatives used a series of points of order, as well as an official briefing afterwards, to argue that the Speaker was blocking the will of the people.
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