Lights. Camera. Lindsay! Speaker’s show lands Starmer with yet another headache

What the hell has Keir Starmer done to upset the speaker? Was it that row they had after prime minister’s questions a few weeks back, when Keir appeared to have taken objection to Lindsay Hoyle’s ad libbed remarks about not being responsible for Starmer not answering any of the questions? Has Hoyle finally had enough of the government announcing policy decisions in press conferences and media briefings, rather than in statements to the House of Commons?

Or is Lindsay just a bit bored? Perhaps he has decided to liven things up a bit in the dog days of the current parliament. Go out with a bang. Place himself centre stage. Lights. Camera. Action.

Take your pick. Whichever it is, Hoyle has just landed Starmer with a headache he would rather have avoided. One that he didn’t see coming.

Lindsay was brief and to the point with his statement at the beginning of Monday’s proceedings in the Commons. Several honourable and right honourable members had written to him, he began. Including the leader of the opposition. So far, so normal. MPs are always writing to the speaker about something they are unhappy about. It’s part of their naturally self-important, attention-seeking behaviour.

The matter in hand was the prime minister’s answers to the house in relation to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US. MPs felt they had been misled and Kemi Badenoch was seeking a debate to refer Starmer to the privileges committee. Now Lindsay paused. Took a breath to summon up what was left of his gravitas. Such debates should be granted only very sparingly, he said. As gatekeeper it was his job to make sure that anything frivolous would not be taken forward. This was a measure of last resort.

At this point, it seemed like a no-brainer that Hoyle would deny the application for the debate. Because almost nothing could be more frivolous than this. It was just Kemi trying it on. No more, no less. Not even hope, let alone expectation. Just an opportunity to cause embarrassment. Just getting the speaker to make an adjudication would go down as a win for the leader of the opposition. A last bit of parliamentary trouble-making before the local elections in 10 days’ time.

Because Kemi’s arguments were all over the place. She didn’t even really know what she was objecting to. She had started a week or so by insisting Starmer had lied to parliament as it was “preposterous” to suggest no one had told him Mandy had failed his vetting. Fairly soon, she had to retract this one as it became clear this was precisely what had happened.

Her most recent accusations smacked of desperation. Flinging mud at the walls in the hope that something sticks. First Kemi insisted Keir had misled the Commons when he had told the house that due process had been followed in the vetting procedure. Which it more or less had. Though it might have been unorthodox. Mandelson might have failed the vetting procedures of UK Security Vetting but he was still approved by Olly Robbins, the then permanent secretary in the Foreign Office. And no rules were broken by appointing Mandy as ambassador before he got security clearance. Common sense doesn’t count as a rule.

Next, Kemi clutched at straws over Starmer’s claim no pressure had been put on Robbins to give Mandy the thumbs up. Yes, No 10 had phoned regularly to see how the vetting process was coming along, but no one had leaned on Olly, he had claimed in his evidence to the foreign affairs select committee only last week. In fact he went further. He said he would make the same decision to approve Mandelson all over again, regardless of the scandal and chaos that had been caused. Quite some admission. There are legitimate questions over the decision to send Mandy to Washington. But none of them are covered by a referral to the privileges committee.

Now Lindsay tried to distance himself from his earlier statement: the detached outer ego separating from an inner world as the only way of coping with the emotional consequences. If he were to grant the debate on referring Starmer to the privileges committee, it would in no way be taken as a presumption of guilt. It was just a run of the mill procedural matter. The sort of thing that could take place any day. Except, of course, it doesn’t. It is actually a procedure granted very rarely. As with Boris Johnson.

But for Hoyle, the similarities between Starmer and Johnson were all too real. Boris had been found guilty of lying to the house about breaking the law via a police investigation. As for Keir? Er … well. He hadn’t actually broken the law or been investigated by the police or even been found to have misled the Commons with a few sentences that could have been better phrased. But apart from that, the accusations levelled at the prime minister were identical to the ones faced by Johnson. In fact, if anything, Keir was by far the most culpable.

Duty called. So Lindsay placed the black cap on his head. Keir was to face the sentence. “Why now?” Hoyle asked himself rhetorically. That was not for him to wonder. He could only take the application as and when it came. It wasn’t as if he had been writing to himself. Though he might as well have been. Because Lindsay didn’t appear to have realised he had just made the case for not granting the debate. That the letters had been not just frivolous but hopelessly premature.

The foreign affairs select committee is doing an excellent job of finding out who did what, why and when and has yet to hear from several players or make its final report. Why not at least wait until then before making a final decision? This was like a judge moving to closing statements without hearing half the evidence.

But Lindsay was implacable. The debate would go ahead tomorrow. No wonder the opposition benches were all smiles. This was beyond their wildest dreams. The Lib Dems had an outbreak of piety. The Tories just had a laugh. This was all a game to them. And they had won before the debate had even begun. They knew there was no chance of Labour MPs voting en masse to refer the prime minister to the privileges committee. But that had never been the point. Even if they lost, they won. Just scream cover-up. Someone might even believe them. That would be a bonus.