Obsessive Remainer Labour MP Harriet Harman, has put herself forward as a candidate for the job of Speaker of the House of Commons now that this post is being vacated by John Bercow. I hope that the members of the House of Commons have the common sense and foresight to not put Harman in the Speaker’s chair. If that happened then all that the Commons would be doing is replacing one appallingly biased Remainer Speaker with his clone.
Apart from her known and strong Remain position, there is much else that should give the public cause for concern with the idea of Harriet Harman becoming Commons’ Speaker. The first is that she has been intimately connected with some of the worst and most damaging of Labour’s legislation when she was a Minister. In particular she steered through the Commons the 2010 Equality Act that increased the fervour of local governments and state agencies for costly and wasteful diversity guff and has advantaged some groups in society at the expense of others.
Harriet Harman is also, in the minds of the public, tainted by her association whilst working for the National Council of Civil Liberties back in the 1970’s, with a child-sex promotion outfit called the Paedophile Information Exchange. Back in those heady days when the after effects of the 1960’s sexual revolution were being digested by society and Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody and Status Quo’s ‘Down Down’ were two of that year’s best selling singles, there were a number of iffy groups that were attaching themselves to groups like the NCCL. One of those groups was PIE who were given associate status within NCCL.
Whilst there is no suggestion of course that Ms Harman, who was NCCL’s legal officer at the time, had engaged in any promotion of paedophilia or the PIE group, to allow this group to be associated with NCCL for so long shows at best a serious error of judgement. At the time there were a number of pro-paedo groups such as PIE and the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), who were hanging or who were attempting to hang on the coat tails of legitimate groups trying to advance equality for Lesbians Gays and Bisexuals.
These paedophile advocacy groups tried to paint paedophiles as being oppressed and that paedophilia was just another sexual orientation. PIE should never have been given houseroom in the NCCL and it is testament to the madness and the naivety of the Left at the time that PIE were accommodated by the NCCL in this way. Even the high profile Young Liberals member, Peter Hain was aware enough of PIE’s dodgyness to want to go public with his criticisms of PIE and those entities that gave PIE a platform. Harriet Harman, unlike Patricia Hewitt who was also involved in the NCCL at the time, not given as profuse an apology for her actions and associations at that time as maybe she could have done. Whilst not wanting to concentrate too much on Harman’s PIE associations I have to say that the failure to properly explain or apologise for her group’s actions at the time looks bad. There is a way back to the correct moral path for those who have made awful moral choices such as those made by Harriet Harman, but it requires an honest recognition of such mistakes and a public explanation of how these mistakes came about. I have not seen enough to satisfy myself from Harman that shows that she has learned anything from her mistakes.
I do not think that Harriet Harman will be seen by the public as a ‘clean hands’ Speaker. Her biases are well known and her fingers have been in a lot of legislative pies as a minister. Also her husband Jack Dromey is a Labour MP. All these things would contribute to a air of bias and favouritism, whether justified or unjustified, swirling around potential Speaker Harman. If she gets the job there will be just as many accusations of bias or party favouritism as there have been aimed at Speaker Bercow. In order to have a stable Parliament the House should not appoint another activist speaker like Bercow. What is needed is someone who knows the role and understands what the role requires. From what I can see the best qualified candidate or potential candidate that is currently being discussed at the moment is the current Deputy Speaker Lindsay Hoyle. Mr Hoyle is notably less activist than Bercow and, because of his experience in the role as Bercow’s deputy, understands Parliamentary procedure. He is also suitable in my view as he is a Labour MP and it would be right and proper to follow a Conservative member as Speaker with one from the Opposition. He may be that favourable to the Remain party but Mr Hoyle would bring much needed balance to the position of Speaker, a position that has been tainted by the antics of John Bercow.
Although I would like to see Mr Hoyle as Speaker he will face a lot of resistance from the Remain party in the Commons. However he’s the best placed at the moment to do the job and return to the Commons some degree of public respect and a proper challenge to the appalling and notably biased Harriet Harman.
