British lawmakers are jostling over the best seat in the House.
Ten candidates are vying for the prestigious 600-year-old position as speaker of the House of Commons, each pledging sweeping reforms following a damaging scandal over legislators’ expenses claims.
They include a former top diplomat, a clutch of outspoken veterans and a young Sikh legislator.
The speaker’s ornate wooden chair is vacant after Michael Martin became the first presiding officer to be forced out in more than 300 years, tainted by his role in the scandal over the lavish expenses claimed by British legislators.
Martin quit last month amid anger over his reluctance to reform allowance rules and public scorn over his attempts to block the expenses’ publication.
Candidates to replace him launched their campaigns ahead of a secret ballot of the 646 lawmakers on Monday, pledging sweeping reforms aimed at shoring up public confidence in the country’s tarnished politics.
“We have to restore trust in politics,” opposition Conservative lawmaker John Bercow, a leading candidate to win the post, told a meeting at which all 10 contenders addressed their fellow lawmakers.
He pledged to be an agent for overdue change and said the expenses scandal had exposed parliament’s failings.
Ann Widdecombe, a veteran Conservative lawmaker known for her lighthearted appearances on reality television shows, has promised quick reforms if she is elected as speaker.
Since Widdecombe already has pledged to step down at the next national election, which is likely to be called in May next year, she vowed to “get in there, do a job ... and then hand over to a fresh parliament.”
Former foreign secretary Margaret Beckett, Martin’s deputies Alan Haselhurst and Michael Lord, and Parmjit Dhanda, a young Sikh lawmaker, are among others seeking election as speaker. Dhanda, 37, has pledged to hold key meetings outside London and use Internet polls to ask the public what issues lawmakers should debate.
An 11th candidate — maverick Labour Party lawmaker Frank Field — withdrew from the race shortly before the meeting, saying he doubted he had enough support to win.
The speaker also serves as an elected legislator for a political party, but is supposed to be impartial and independent of government — unlike the US, where the speaker of the House of Representatives is often a partisan advocate for the majority party.
Tasks include maintaining decorum — sometimes shouting “Order! Order!” — from a raised wooden chair in the middle of the Commons chamber. The seat features an ornate canopy, from a time when curtains were drawn around the chair, allowing a speaker to use it as a toilet and ensuring lengthy debates could continue without the need for bathroom breaks.
The speaker decides which lawmakers are called on to speak, can suspend those who break rules, and represents the chamber in discussions with Queen Elizabeth II and the House of Lords.
It is a post with a notable perk — a swanky “grace and favor” home inside parliament — but a grim history: seven previous speakers have been beheaded, one murdered and another killed in battle.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver