The one person right now who you might have expect to be called to speak in a debate of racism in the House of Commons would be Diane Abbott who, subject of a high profile incidence of racist language from a Tory donor... yet the Speaker said that despite Abbott rising over 40 times to speak during the debate, he ran out of time to call her.
If you wanted to confirm to the average voter that the political system is racist, this would be a good way to do it.
According to my less-than-well-thumbed copy of Erskine May, there is a strict order of questions to the Prime Minister laid out in the Order Paper for the day and Mr Speaker was simply following the protocol and calling those listed on that Order Paper.
It was not a Commons debate as such - it was Questions to the Prime Minister and most back-bench MPs have to wait weeks for a chance to ask a PMQ. Unfair to pre-empt!
The conventions of Parliament are exactly that, conventions; they are not laws, and if the speaker had wished to invite a Q. from the person whose experience the House was discussing, he could have... che chose not to, even if he is hiding behind convention
Having had his wrist slapped for selecting a Labour amendment to an SNP opposition day motion, I'm guessing Hoyle chose to play it safe in not breaking convention by calling Ms Abbott.
After all, a Speaker serves at the whim of MPs and pissing off at least 20 scheduled to ask #PMQs would've have been, as YES MINISTER put it, "courageous."
DA presently doesn't hold the Labour whip so Starmer's intervention was likely calculated more to attack the Nastiz than to defend DA.
James O'Brien is incensed that Hoyle called Mark Francois instead of giving Diane Abbott a sort of 'Right of Reply' so I rechecked the Order Paper for 13/03:
@ChrisMayLA6 there is an adjacent argument. Hoyle combines stupidity with a wish to please - after all Abbot was suspended from the Labour Party. Maybe he could please both Red and Blue?
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