Lindsay Hoyle rages to empty benches as Labour hides from its own MPs

Boom! An explosion in the House of Commons. Right before the statement on the approval of new gas exploration licences in the North Sea, the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, went up like the Queen Vic in the EastEnders 40th anniversary special. The reason he was so angry is the reason he is always angry, that the news had been briefed to the media before it was formally announced to MPs in the house. It is, by my count, the eleventh time he has lost his temper in this way, and always for this specific reason, and in doing so he’s made himself a real hostage to fortune. Each furious peroration has to be more furious than the last, or else he risks giving the impression that he’s calming down, which he absolutely isn’t. Most commented 1 The Horses review — lunch with an influencer, Topjaw’s Jesse Burgess Food & Drink 91 comments 2 Tripsnacking? Finally a travel trend I can get on board with Advice 54 comments 3 My father’s Facebook posts about ‘our special angel’ make me cringe Parenting 32 comments 4 Bill Bailey: A heckler told me to get a haircut — I refused for 40 years Theatre & Dance 34 comments 5 Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall: ‘My kids tell me to back off when they cook’ The Sunday Times Magazine 21 comments This performance, though, was his most impassioned, which only made it all the more odd. Rage, when correctly deployed, is a powerful emotion. There’s leadership to be found in well-judged anger. But when the cause is one that absolutely no one on earth cares about apart from the person who’s completely losing it, the vibe is less Pericles’s Funeral Oration and more spice addict in a supermarket car park. Sir Lindsay Hoyle erupts at Michael Shanks Part of the reason the announcement had been leaked the night before and then formally made at 6am was because the government had done something popular, but no one was prepared to take the credit for it. The granting of new gas licences in the North Sea appears, to almost everyone involved apart from most Labour Party MPs, to be a triumph of common sense. Top stories 1 Tripsnacking? 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Advertisement “It is shameful,” shouted Sir Linsday. “It is an immense discourtesy that the secretary of state did not come here to make the statement!” It went on like this for five full minutes. If he hadn’t exhausted every entry in the thesaurus to be found under “shameful” it might have gone on longer. Top stories 1 Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall: ‘My kids tell me to back off when they cook’ The Sunday Times Magazine 2 From gold to tech stocks: how to build the perfect investment portfolio Saving & Investing 3 High street banks are on borrowed time Saving & Investing 4 Belgium’s most stylish autumn weekend break — and it’s not Bruges Belgium “I’m sorry!” he continued, reaching for new registers of rage with every passing sentence. “Sorry that Sky News is more important than the members on both sides!” Politics newsletter Get our daily insider’s guide to Westminster, plus a rundown of PMQs every Wednesday. Sign up with one click You’ve successfully signed up to the Politics newsletter Explore our newsletters An error occurred. Please use the link below. Politics newsletter Explore our newsletters For emphasis, he pointed a finger at the benches on both sides of the house, but all this emphasised was the unfortunate fact that there was no one to be found on either of them. Prime minister’s questions had just finished and everyone had left, apart from the junior energy minister, a genial young Scotsman called Michael Shanks, who had to sit there and soak up this ferocious bollocking like a recalcitrant schoolchild too afraid to point out that it wasn’t him who’d done it. “Am I getting the message through, minister?” Hoyle wailed. “Am I getting the message through?” Shanks nodded, but he knows what everyone else knows. The answer is no, the message has not gone through, because no one cares and so it’s only a matter of time before Mount Lindsay erupts again. Advertisement They’d argued about the same subject at prime minister’s questions. Kemi Badenoch reminded Andy Burnham that last week she’d instructed him to “stop faffing” and grant the new licences, which he’d now done, so it was her victory really. Her MPs cheered the news. The Labour benches were silent. Burnham announced that the measures would bring down the cost of gas for UK customers . That’s debatable, but what’s not debatable is that his own benches don’t like it. Even if you don’t mean it, it’s probably best, at a time like this, just to pretend to be in favour of cheaper energy bills. He had another announcement too. That he had “asked the chancellor and the energy secretary to look at removing unfair standing charges on gas bills”. That would be a big deal. It would save households about 30p a day, which adds up to a fair bit of cash. After prime minister’s questions, when journalists have a little briefing with the prime minister’s spokesperson, absolutely no information was forthcoming about what this might mean, beyond asking someone to have a look at something. “You have the prime minister’s words,” was said a lot. What did they mean? Sadly no one knows. Andy Burnham tells MPs he has asked for a review at standing charges In the 1980s, President Reagan used to keep a sign on the Oval Office desk which read: “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.” They are wise words, but politics is about winning elections, and so getting credit is ultimately quite important. Now is not a time at which the Labour Party can afford to be holed up in Aberdeen, avoiding the public adulation of their own decisions.