‘Islamist Threat’: UK House Speaker Says ‘Terrorist’ Menace to MPs at Heart of Political Crisis

UK Parliament speaker Lindsay Hoyle has doubled down on his claims extraordinary convention-busting decisions on the Israel-Gaza vote on Wednesday were informed by terrorist threats against Members of the house who didn’t vote in favour of a ceasefire.

Efforts by left-wing politicians from two parties in Britain’s lower house on Wednesday to call for “an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Israel” and for Israel to not pursue a ground offensive without the political embarrassment of voting for each other’s motions ended in chaos. The position of the speaker is in peril after he broke with long-established procedure to allow unconventional votes, and stands accused of having done so to benefit the left-wing Labour Party.

Sir Lindsay is in a difficult situation as whatever explanation that can rationally be given for his decisions on Wednesday do not land well. Former attorney general Sir Geoffrey Cox put his interpretation on this dichotomy, and wrote Thursday:

There are two possible explanations for the Speaker’s decision to abandon long-standing convention. First, he did it to assist his former party leader get out of a bind. Secondly, as he says, he did it in a misguided attempt to protect certain Labour MPs from the intimidation they said would otherwise have followed, if they had voted against the SNP motion.

Either reason is unacceptable. If the former, it is an abuse of his office. If the latter, it is an abject surrender to intolerance and tyranny; it meekly offers up the House of Commons as able to be influenced by external threats.

Conservative MP Danny Kruger said today it was a specific Islamist threat that had been alluded to. He wrote:

Sir Lindsay allowed Labour to use the Islamist threat to change the way our democracy works. This is unacceptable… Starmer is even more culpable. He should be standing for democracy and against mob rule. Instead he used the threat of violence for party political ends, to wriggle out of a crisis created by Labour’s unbridgeable division over Israel.

Indeed, Sir Lindsay insists he broke convention to allow leftist MPs to vote for a ceasefire despite their party affiliation to protect them from terrorist attacks that could have followed had they abstained for party-political reasons. Issuing an apology and explanation on Thursday morning from the speaker’s chair, Hoyle made clear he believed there was a terrorist threat against Members of Parliament who didn’t vote for ceasefire.

He said:

I never ever want to go through a situation where I pick up a phone to find a friend of whatever side has been murdered by a terrorist. I also don’t want another attack on this house — I was in the chair on that day. I have seen, I have witnessed: I won’t share the details, but the details of the things that have been brought to me are absolutely frightening on all members of this house on all sides. I have a duty of care… if my mistake is looking after members, then I am guilty.

…It was the protection that led to me to make a wrong decision. But what I do not apologise [for] is the risk that is being put on all members at the moment. I had serious meetings yesterday with the police on the issues and threats to politicians. Threats heading to an election. I do not want anything to happen again.

Events alluded to by the speaker in his speech seem to have included the murder of Conservative lawmaker Sir David Amess, who was stabbed to death by an Islamist extremist in 2021, and the 2017 Westminster attack where a police officer was stabbed to death on the Parliamentary estate by an Islamist.

While a group of Conservative and Scottish Nationalist Members of Parliament have launched a petition calling for Hoyle to stand down over the flaunting of convention to benefit the left — Islamist threat notwithstanding — other members have given their support to the speaker. Tory elder statesman Sir Iain Duncan Smith was one, saying “his apology showed just how much pressure he had been under”.