Lindsay Hoyle Elected New Commons Speaker

Deputy Speaker picked by MPs to replace John Bercow, who stepped down in October after 10 years in the role.
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Lindsay Hoyle has been elected by MPs as the next Speaker of the House of Commons.

Having served as deputy Speaker since 2010, Hoyle was seen as the favourite in the race to succeed John Bercow.

The Labour politician received more than 50% of votes in the fourth ballot of MPs, defeating his party colleague Chris Bryant. Hoyle received 325 votes to Bryant’s 213.

Hoyle, the MP for Chorley, will be required to resign from the Labour Party in order to carry out his duties as speakers must be politically impartial.

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After being dragged to the Speaker’s chair, as is tradition, Hoyle said that he hoped the Commons would be “once again a great respected House, not just in here but across the world”.

He added: “It’s the envy and we’ve got to make sure that tarnish is polished away, that the respect and tolerance that we expect from everyone who works in here will be shown and we’ll keep that in order.”

He paid tribute to his daughter Natalie Lewis-Hoyle, who was found dead in her bedroom just before Christmas 2017.

He said: “There is one person who’s not here, my daughter Natalie. I wish she’d have been here, we all miss her as a family, no more so than her mum.

“I’ve got to say, she was everything to all of us, she will always be missed but she will always be in our thoughts.”

Hoyle beat a wide range of other candidates including former Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman.

The other candidates were Dame Rosie Winterton and Dame Eleanor Laing, who also both served as Bercow’s deputies, Labour’s Meg Hillier and Bryant, plus Conservative Sir Edward Leigh.

Boris Johnson said he was sure Hoyle would “stick up” for backbenchers and adhere to a “strict Newtonian concept of time” at prime minister’s questions.

The PM added: “But I believe you will also bring your signature kindness, kindness and reasonableness, to our proceedings, and thereby to help to bring us together as a parliament and a democracy.”

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said Hoyle will “stand up for the principle” of parliamentary democracy.

He also joked that Hoyle had “eyes in the back of his head” after a photo emerged at the weekend of him watching the Rugby World Cup Final but not facing the television.

He added: “You’re going to need eyes in the back of your head. It’s a difficult job, you don’t know what’s coming at you next, and so I realised you’ve actually been in training in this.

“So I’ve been looking at a photograph of you at the weekend apparently watching the rugby cup final, whilst at the same time not watching the television.

“So the only conclusion I can draw from this is that you literally do have eyes in the back of your head.”

The candidates used their speeches to distance themselves from Bercow, in a bid to stamp their own identity on the key Commons role.

Bercow, 56, left the role after a decade which has been viewed as a time of reform but also controversy.