End game for Michael Martin
By Ian Dunt
The pressure on Speaker Michael Martin has reached tipping point with a motion of no confidence receiving cross-party support and a line of senior Labour figures urging him to step down before the next election.
David Cameron has pointedly refused to endorse the Speaker, while Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has given permission to his front bench team to denounce him in public.
Labour backbenchers are planning to circulate a letter calling for him to go, and minister are understood to have been encouraging the prime minister to get rid of him.
The no confidence motion will almost certainly be tabled by backbench Tory MP Douglas Carswell next week. Yesterday, he described it as “the first time anything like this has been done in 300 years”.
Labour MP Gordon Prentice said the Speaker was “too compromised” by recent events and came out in support of the motion, together with fellow Labour MP Paul Flynn.
Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb has also joined calls for Mr Martin to step down.
He will almost certainly be joined by transport spokesman Norman Baker, who was attacked by the Speaker earlier this week.
Mr Martin’s angry outbursts at Mr Baker and Labour MP Kate Hoey on Monday appear to have precipitated his fall, with his criticism of the MPs questions demonstrating an underestimation of public anger at the expenses scandal.
“I hear your public utterances and your pearls of wisdom on Sky News. It’s easy to talk then,” he told Ms Hoey.
A day later he refused to retract the attack.
When asked by Labour MP David Winnick whether he would apologise, he said: “I don’t think the honourable gentleman was in the Chamber yesterday.
“That was the business of yesterday.”
Mr Winnick retorted that the answer was “not adequate”, to which Mr Martin replied: “If it’s not adequate then the honourable gentleman knows what he must do then.”
That comment was interpreted as an invitation put down a vote of no confidence.
Tony McNulty, employment minister, was the first minister to publicly criticise the Speaker over his handling of the questions, saying: “I thought he was a bit heavy-handed with Kate Hoey and Norman Baker – unusually so for him, to be fair.”
Ministers and senior MPs were said to be lining up to privately tell the Speaker he had lost the confidence of parliament yesterday.
“Speaker Martin is not the right man to have at the helm,” Mr Prentice told the BBC.
“He is too compromised.
“It is a question of competence and acting fairly and in a non-partisan manner.”
Mr Martin has previously come in for criticism over his wife’s £4000 taxi bill and his handling of the constitutional crisis triggered by the arrest of shadow immigration minister Damian Green.
