In two short minutes, Lindsay Hoyle made himself a career’s worth of enemies

Fists clenched, eyes bulging, shouts of “shame” and “disgrace”, MPs waving their arms in fury… you would have to go back to the darkest days of the Brexit battles in 2019 to recall similar scenes after a speaker’s ruling.

But it was not spiky former chair John Bercow who drew the howls of outrage this afternoon. It was Lindsay Hoyle, his genial, cuddly and hard-to-dislike successor – the man who was chosen precisely because he embodied the very opposite traits of Bercow.

Sir Lindsay had just announced that he would allow a Labour amendment to a Scottish National Party motion on an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza, even though the day’s debate had been allocated to the SNP. Behind the arcane parliamentary procedures, the point was that he had just let Keir Starmer off a mighty big hook.

“Shame!” screeched the SNP benches, seeing their chance to embarrass their chief rival vanish. “Disgraceful,” snarled equally furious Tories, seeing Labour’s leader slip the net.

Visibly nervous, Sir Lindsay tried to defend his decision to allow “the widest possible” range of votes. But it wasn’t well received.

“There is a precedent,” Sir Lindsay began. “When?” demanded a Scottish voice, breaching the convention that speaker rulings are heard in respectful silence. Hoyle snapped snippily: “Does somebody wish to speak?”

He had decided the old convention, that said an SNP day could not be hijacked by the bigger official opposition, “reflects an outdated approach”. Cue more howls of outrage.

“Bring back Bercow,” hissed a voice from the Conservative benches. Hoyle grimaced.

You could tell something was up when Sir Lindsay took his seat for Prime Minister’s Questions some 90 minutes earlier. He nipped in at the last moment, looking tense and uncomfortable. Usually the soul of merriment, Hoyle was troubled. MPs stared, trying to read his mind. Was the safe pair of hands planning to rock the boat?

The House took up the speaker’s mood and PMQs was subdued. Although the big issue of the day was Gaza and the SNP’s problematic motion, Starmer ducked the issue entirely. He devoted all six of his questions to some lawyerly jousting with Rishi Sunak over the spat between Kemi Badenoch and the former Post Office chair Henry Staunton. Would the PM care to endorse Badenoch’s allegation that Staunton was a fibber? Nope, the prime minister was not sticking his neck out for a highly ambitious rival.

The SNP’s Stephen Flynn did press the prime minister on the Middle East conflict. Flynn eschewed his usual snarly rhetoric to describe succinctly the crisis in Gaza, with 60 per cent of buildings damaged or destroyed. His questions were all the more powerful for his self-restraint.

Starmer, meanwhile, sat looking as nervous as the speaker. His legs were tightly folded, one foot twitching into thin air, hands and papers lay protectively over his groin. Don’t take up poker, Sir Keir.

After letting PMQs overrun by 15 minutes, the speaker handed the chair to deputy Dame Rosie Winterton and sped from the chamber, brow furrowed. We later discovered that behind the scenes he was in deep disagreement with the clerk to the House of Commons, who published a letter taking issue with his ruling.

Labour began time-wasting. A stream of pretend points of order gushed from Starmer loyalists Lucy Powell, Liam Byrne and Dame Angela Eagle. From the SNP benches began a low, angry drumming that turned into their go-to battle cry: “disgrace!” Their opposition day was timed to end at 7pm sharp, see, and these tactics were burning up their allotted minutes.

Dame Rosie dashed out to mop Lindsay’s brow, and left surprised junior Sir Roger Gale in the chair. MPs wondered if the janitor would be asked to take over next. Clearly, something was going down in the speaker’s boudoir.

The clock-draining trickery continued. Labour’s Chris Bryant developed an acute interest in driving licences, using up another six minutes of SNP time with an impromptu speech. One of his better ones, oddly. Labour forced a division, which used up another 20 minutes. Some of their backbenchers mysteriously got lost in the “no” lobby and a search and rescue party was sent to find them.

Hoyle finally re-emerged, looking flustered, and announced his ruling. A day ago, I would have stated confidently that Sir Lindsay was a man without real enemies. In two short minutes, that changed.

Owen Thompson, the SNP chief whip, rose to protest. "We’ve already had a significant delay to the start of this motion and now we appear to be doing things in a way that’s never been done before. What’s the point?" The SNP benches burst into applause.

“Clapping won’t assist,” rebuked Sir Lindsay. Someone jeered: “It’s new rules.” Mr Speaker brusquely ruled that he would be taking no more points of order.

Sir Keir slipped out of the chamber before the Gaza debate began, vanishing so discreetly that I did not see if he mouthed “thank you” to the speaker, as a Conservative MP subsequently claimed.

David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, spoke for Labour. Chewing his words slowly like a juicy ham sandwich, he said it was time for the whole house to unite.

Few other MPs were as satisfied. Lib Dem Layla Moran, who has family in Gaza, was “speechless” with the way the debate had begun. Tory Tobias Ellwood called it a sad day for parliament, adding: “Shame on us for failing to find common ground.”

Meanwhile, in Gaza, the bombs continued to drop.