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General election: Lindsay Hoyle extends lead in Speaker ballot, but still short of 50% of votes needed – live news
General election: Lindsay Hoyle and Chris Bryant in final round to be next Speaker – live news
(32 minutes later)
Rolling coverage of the day’s political events as they happen, including 2019 general election campaigning
Rolling coverage of the day’s political events as they happen, including 2019 general election campaigning
All three candidates appear to have benefited from the previous round’s eliminations but Bryant saw the greatest increase in support from the second round to the third.
Chris Bryant: An increase of 49 votes, or about 40%
Sir Lindsay Hoyle: An increase of 23 votes, or about 9%
Dame Eleanor Laing: An increase of 14 votes, or about 12%
There were two spoiled votes, Clarke tells the Commons, and 10 fewer MPs cast their ballot in this latest round than in the second.
Bryant is 75 short of Hoyle’s total. So, should a significant proportion of those who voted for Laing stick around and switch to him, Bryant could yet overhaul the favourite.
There is another way of looking at that, of course:
*Please note: I put a set of brackets in the wrong place in the previous post, giving an incorrect figure for Chris Bryant’s latest level of support. I’ve corrected it but you may need to refresh your screen to see the accurate results.
The Father of the House, Ken Clarke, has returned to his seat in the Commons and is announcing the results. Here they are (with the second round’s results in brackets):
Sir Lindsay Hoyle 267 (244)
Chris Bryant 169 (120)
Dame Eleanor Laing 127 (122)
Laing is eliminated, Clarke says. Bryant and Hoyle will go through to a final round.
The Guardian has just published its editorial on Labour’s general election campaign, saying Corbyn’s plans are “required to repair the damage caused by a system that is being run in favour of privileged individuals whose market and political power allows them to extract cash from everyone else”.
As we await the results of this round of voting, here’s what Parliament has to say on the office and role of the Speaker:
As we await the results of this round of voting, here’s what Parliament has to say on the office and role of the Speaker:
A majority of voters think Jo Swinson should be included in the ITV leaders’ debate featuring Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn, a YouGov poll suggests.
A majority of voters think Jo Swinson should be included in the ITV leaders’ debate featuring Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn, a YouGov poll suggests.
That’s all from me for tonight.
That’s all from me for tonight.
My colleague Kevin Rawlinson is now taking over.
My colleague Kevin Rawlinson is now taking over.
In the chamber Ken Clarke has just announced that Harriet Harman is pulling out.
In the chamber Ken Clarke has just announced that Harriet Harman is pulling out.
That means there are three candidates left: Sir Lindsay Hoyle, Dame Eleanor Laing, and Chris Bryant.
That means there are three candidates left: Sir Lindsay Hoyle, Dame Eleanor Laing, and Chris Bryant.
New ballot papers are being printed, and then the ballot opens. We should get the final result soon after 7pm.
New ballot papers are being printed, and then the ballot opens. We should get the final result soon after 7pm.
Some 575 MPs voted in the second ballot - 13 more than in the first round.
Some 575 MPs voted in the second ballot - 13 more than in the first round.
Assuming they all keep voting, that means a candidate needs 288 votes to win.
Assuming they all keep voting, that means a candidate needs 288 votes to win.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle is short by 44.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle is short by 44.
Ken Clarke has just read out the results of the second round of voting.
Ken Clarke has just read out the results of the second round of voting.
Here they are (with the results from the first round in brackets).
Here they are (with the results from the first round in brackets).
Sir Lindsay Hoyle: 244 (211)
Sir Lindsay Hoyle: 244 (211)
Dame Eleanor Laing: 122 (113)
Dame Eleanor Laing: 122 (113)
Chris Bryant: 120 (98)
Chris Bryant: 120 (98)
Harriet Harman: 59 (72)
Harriet Harman: 59 (72)
Dame Rosie Winterton: 30 (46)
Dame Rosie Winterton: 30 (46)
Winterton has now been eliminated.
Winterton has now been eliminated.
Hoyle has extended his lead, but he is still short of the votes he needs.
Hoyle has extended his lead, but he is still short of the votes he needs.
In the Commons the division bells are ringing, which means the results of the next round of voting in the election of the new Speaker will be announced soon.
In the Commons the division bells are ringing, which means the results of the next round of voting in the election of the new Speaker will be announced soon.
Sky News is now proposing a three-way leaders’s debate, involving Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem leader.
Sky News is now proposing a three-way leaders’s debate, involving Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem leader.
And Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister and leader of the SNP, has described the decision to exclude her as “outrageous”. Her party has 35 MPs, while Swinson’s has just 19 - and eight of those are defectors from other parties.
And Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister and leader of the SNP, has described the decision to exclude her as “outrageous”. Her party has 35 MPs, while Swinson’s has just 19 - and eight of those are defectors from other parties.
This morning Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, got the 8.10 slot on the Today programme to discuss Labour figures showing that almost 80,000 operations were cancelled last year.
Ed Conway, Sky’s economics editor, has posted a good thread on Twitter explaining this figure in context. Here are the key points.
More than 400,000 EU citizens living in Britain applied for settled status in the last month, in a huge surge reflecting the threat of a no-deal Brexit.
The number of total applications has now passed 2.2m, up from 1.8m in September, the Home Office has said, with around 17,000 applications per day. The new total represents 64% of the estimated 3.4m EU citizens living in the UK.
The rise in applications in the last four weeks reflects concerns among EU citizens that they would be left in legal limbo if the UK had crashed out of the EU as threatened by Boris Johnson on 31 October.
A spokesman for the Home Office said 1.8m had received either settled status (given to those in the country for five years or more) or pre-settled status (given to those in the country for fewer than five years).
Some 400,000 applications are still being processed.
EU citizens and their family members have until at least 31 December 2020 to apply whatever the outcome of Brexit. If the new prime minister seals a deal that deadline will be extended to June 2021.
Wales is on course for a fundamental transformation in its political landscape with Welsh Labour’s dominance under threat, the first opinion poll of the campaign in the country is suggesting.
The YouGov poll for ITV-Cymru Wales and Cardiff University has the Tories level with Labour in Wales while the Brexit Party is in third place and the Lib Dems have lost ground.
Here are the voting intention figures (with changes on the last poll conducted last month in brackets).
Labour: 29 (+4)
Conservatives: 28 (-1)
Brexit party: 15 (+1)
Liberal Democrats: 12 (-4)
Plaid Cymru: 12 (no change)
Greens: 3 (-1)
Others: 1 (no change)
In a blog Prof Roger Awan-Scully, head of politics and international relations at Cardiff University, cautiously suggests this could lead to Labour losing 10 seats in Wales, and the Conservatives gaining nine.
These are from the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush.
As Bush points out, the election of the Commons Speaker is taking a while because MPs use an exhaustive ballot (successive rounds of voting, as candidates drop out). In the other main internal House of Commons elections, for select committee chairs, they use the alternative vote.
The fact that they are not using first past the post (FPTP), the system used in the UK to elect MPs, might be seen as evidence that FPTP is not ideal and that there are much better voting systems available. But all the MPs who sit in the Commons have managed to get there via FPTP, and the arguments for replacing are rarely heard at the moment. (In fact, in the election campaign so far, the only party making a big issue of electoral reform is the Brexit party.)
Probably not.
There are now just 22 new votes up for grabs. Even if all of them go to Rosie Winterton, assuming no other changes, she would not catch Harriet Harman, and so there must be a strong chance of her dropping out after the next round of voting.
That would free up 68 votes - almost all the 70 that Hoyle would need to win. (See 4.20am.)
Of course, they won’t all go to Hoyle. But it would be fair to assume that quite a few at least of the votes for Hillier and Winterton (both Labour MPs) will go to Hoyle (also a Labour MP).
But Hillier and Winterton are also women, and many MPs may understandably be motivated by a desire to see another woman as Speaker, for only the second time in history.
This could be Eleanor Laing’s best route to victory. But is it a plausible one? Even if she were to pick up all the Hillier votes, and all the Winterton votes, and then all the Harriet Harman ones, she would still only be on 241 votes - 41 short of the 282 threshold.
There are scenarios you can imagine which might see someone overhauling Hoyle. But, unlike a party leadership election, this isn’t one of those ballots where people will switch to backing another candidate for personal advancement. It is a secret ballot, and even if MPs do tell the person who eventually wins they are backing their cause, there is little they will gain from the Speaker’s patronage. He or she does not appoint a cabinet.
And switching of this kind only normally happens in an election where voting is driven by a strong desire to block a particular candidate. But Hoyle does not inspire that sort of feelings in MPs. He is well liked, and he is easily acceptable to the house as a whole. We are not expecting to see an operation to scupper his chances.
In other words, it is very hard to see how he does not end up as Speaker by the end of the day.
Ken Clarke tells MPs that no candidate is dropping out.
He says the new ballot papers will be printed.
Labour’s John Speller complains. He says there was no need to print new ballot papers. MPs could have managed with the original ones, he says. He says they would have known who had dropped out.
Clarke says this is the system they are using.
He suspends proceedings until the new ballot papers are printed.
Ken Clarke announces the result.
He says 562 MPs voted. The results are:
Sir Lindsay Hoyle: 211
Dame Eleanor Laing: 113
Chris Bryant: 98
Harriet Harman: 72
Dame Rosie Winterton: 46
Sir Edward Leigh: 12
Meg Hillier: 10
Clarke says Hillier and Leigh are now out, because Hillier came last, and Leigh also received fewer than 5% of votes cast.
He says any other candidate who wants to drop out must say so within the next 10 minutes.
If the 562 MPs who voted stay for the rest of the day, a candidate needs 282 to get more than 50%.
That means Hoyle is only 70 votes short of winning.
In the Commons the division bells are ringing. That means the results of the first round of voting in the election of the new Speaker will be announced shortly.
CapX’s Robert Covile has picked up this gem from the BBC’s coverage of the election of the new Speaker.
Pro-remain independent unionist MP Lady Sylvia Hermon will hardly be punching the air with relief over Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald’s endorsement of her in the forthcoming general election. (See 1.29pm.)
North Down is a solidly unionist seat which is unique in being the only pro-union constituency in Northern Ireland that voted to remain in the 2016 EU referendum.
However, many remain unionist voters remain solidly pro another union as well as being Europhile - the one between Northern Ireland and Britain.
The most affluent parliamentary constituency in the region is also home to a large cohort of retired police officers and ex-military who admired Lady Hermon’s late husband, the combative, often highly controversial former Royal Ulster Constabulary Chief Constable Jack Hermon.
One veteran RUC detective whose own family were split down the middle between leave/remain in the Brexit referendum today described Sinn Fein’s backing for Hermon as a potential “kiss of death” for the North Down MP.
Whichever single unionist candidate stands against her in the campaign will use Sinn Fein’s support for her throughout the weeks ahead in their bid to unseat her, he said.
Whether he is right or wrong most long term observers of the Northern Irish political scene would agree that this was one endorsement Lady Hermon could have done without.
