Alec Shelbrooke: Speaker's contempt shows he is unfit for job

After the 2015 General Election, I received a flurry of emails from voters declaring that they had not voted for me, but as their MP they now demanded that I vote against my own party and instead support policies that were in Labour manifesto because I was “their representative in Parliament”. The fact that those very policies had just been rejected at the ballot box, hence my own re-election, was evidentially a moot point.

Like all MPs I occasionally receive emails from supporters of other political parties informing me that, because they want me to vote against the government on an issue, I have somehow ignored their view, when I cast my vote to support the democratically elected ruling party of which I am a member.

These views highlight a scant regard for democracy that those on the losing side of campaigns are showing these days. It’s been evident in the actions of Corbynistas over recent years, it is showing its face in the United States today and it’s still lingering here in the UK in relation to last year’s Brexit vote.

I voted to remain in a reformed European Union, but I accept that in a free and fair poll of over 33 million voters, the Leave campaign won with a majority of over 1.3 million votes. Like others who voted to remain in the EU I was disappointed with the result but as a democrat I accepted that it was the will of an electorate that voted by a majority, on a binary choice, to leave the EU.

Yet there are those who profess to uphold the values of democracy who now berate me for voting to trigger Article 50. They say I should have ignored the result of the referendum because “people didn’t know what they were voting for”.

This assumption, one held by many of my Parliamentary opponents, is one that shows a profound arrogance towards the electorate and it shows why some are unfit to call themselves democrats. I respect difference of opinion, indeed the reason I voted to trigger Article 50 is because I respect the fact that while I personally voted to remain in the EU a majority voted a different way.

This arrogance of the ‘we know better’ elite is one of the key reasons Donald Trump won the US election. He tapped into the fact that voters had lost trust in their political representatives, something that allowed him to win states such as Pennsylvania where a message of job protection and growth in opportunity resonated in working class areas that previously felt left behind.

This was also a tactic played out by the Leave campaign and one that resonated with blue-collar workers who felt that the European Union’s free movement had done little except depress their wages.

Whether any of these arguments were accurate will be subject to political debate for some years to come, but it is the fact that we debate them that puts us on a higher pedestal than autocratic dictatorships around the world.

I therefore find it disingenuous when I hear figures such as the Speaker of the House of Commons endorse the arguments of a vocal minority against a democratically-elected President of the United States. Especially when these figures have been silent on issues of religious and human rights abuse, homophobia and racism in countries where democracy is but a dream.

It is grandstanding of the worst kind of radical left-wing student politics, but it is hypocritical too.

As Bill Carmichael said in his column in The Yorkshire Post last week, ‘is anyone seriously suggesting that Trump is worse than the Emirs of Kuwait and Qatar, or the Presidents of Indonesia, or China?’ All of these countries have dreadful human rights records, not least North Korea whose representatives the Speaker entertained in his state apartments.

The Speaker is the chief officer of the highest authority of the House of Commons and must remain politically impartial at all times. The very fact that he entered the political fray at all is the reason his position is now untenable. Whether you agree with his stance or not, what is evident is that he has ridden roughshod over impartiality.

Whatever the result of any politicised vote of no confidence in the Speaker, his position is untenable and he must therefore resign.

Alec Shelbrooke is the Conservative MP for Elmet and Rothwell.