What is worse: that Labour blackmailed the Commons Speaker into breaking the rules, that the Speaker proved so easily susceptible to blackmail, or that Labour then openly boasted to journalists about having successfully blackmailed him?This is what I don't understand about the Labour Party. They apparently today successfully blackmailed the Speaker of the House of Commons into ripping up decades of precedent by selecting a Labour amendment on the SNP ceasefire motion. The success of their bully-boy tactics should have been against the odds, because most Speakers down the years would have been resistant to blackmail, but we all know exactly who and what Lindsay Hoyle is - he's a weak man who overcompensates by shouting hysterically, with small-minded preoccupations mostly concerning his own career, and with not a shred of integrity. But the whole point of Labour going to these extraordinary lengths was to save face, and to be able to turn the tables on the SNP (as the likes of Michael Shanks tried to do) by saying "ah, your reaction to the Labour amendment being selected shows that this was always about politics for you and about putting Labour in an awkward spot".
Those advantages of getting the Speaker to do their bidding have been completely blown out of the water simply because they apparently walked up to Nicholas Watt and boasted that they had threatened Hoyle and he had buckled. Watt then naturally immediately told the world what had happened. How does this make any sense? You go to extraordinary lengths to improve the optics of a difficult situation and then just voluntarily show yourselves up as thugs. Ironically, it's reminiscent of the IDF's own behaviour - although it makes no sense to be sharing footage of themselves torturing civilians or selfies of themselves riding the children's bikes they've looted, they can't seem to help themselves, because they're actually proud of how skilled they are as bullies, and want to show off that skill. It's who they are, it's what they do. Ditto for Labour.
Source: What is worse: that Labour blackmailed the Commons Speaker into breaking the rules, that the Speaker proved so easily susceptible to blackmail, or that Labour then openly boasted to journalists about having successfully blackmailed him? (//)