LONDON: Labour MP Clive Lewis protested against swearing allegiance to the King as he hopes one day to live in a Republic of Britain.
The new intake of MPs was sworn in on Wednesday in the House of Commons. Before the MP swearing-in began a new practice was observed. After the re-election of the Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the ‘Mother of the House’ was called to speak, the MotH is longest-serving female MP, Labour’s The Right Honourable Diane Abbot was called to speak after the Father of House Thatcherite Sir Edward Leigh, and both were sworn in before Sir Keir Starmer.
Next in the queue was the New PM Sir Keir Starmer, who chose to make the secular affirmation rather than the oath, this intake saw the highest number ever 40% of secular oaths, with 60% taking a religious option.
Labour MP Clive Lewis protested against swearing allegiance to the King and as he hopes one day to live in a Republic of Britain.
Other Labour MPs:
Gurinder Singh Josan and Tanmanjeet Singh Desi chose to take the religious oath without holding a sacred text.
Yuan Yang UK’s first Chinese born MP, won the newly created constituency Earley and Woodley beating the Conservative candidate.
Shabana Mahmood and Naz Shah both wore Hijabs and swore on the Quran, Shah kissed to Quran and swore to ‘Almighty Allah’.
Kanishka Narayan swore in on the Bhagavad Gita.
It has been noted that over 70 of the new intake of Labour MPs are graduates of the Tony Blair Institute. More evidence of how influential Tony Blair is in this government.
Temporary leader of the opposition Rishi Sunak as usual swore in on the Bhagavad Gita as did Conservative MP Bob Blackman, who also swore in on the King James Bible; Blackman’s Harrow East seat was the only seat in the UK won by a Conservative candidate with more than 50% of the vote and a positive swing. Shivani Raja the Conservative MP, who took the Leicester East seat from Labour for the first time in 37 years also chose the Bhagavad Gita, this goes to show that following the 2022 unrest Indians in Leicester East are sticking with the Conservatives.
Jewish MPs are offered either the Hebrew Bible or the Torah and a few Welsh, Scottish, Irish and Cornish MPs chose to take their oaths in their native language.
Nigel Farage chose to be sworn in on the King James Bible, minutes later he announced a reshuffle of Reform UK’s leadership team. Former Chairman Richard Tice is now Deputy Leader replacing Ben Habib, the new Chairman is Zia Yusuf entrepreneur and donor to the party, former Tory Lee Anderson is appointed as chief whip.
According to Hansard : “One of the first tasks of the new Parliament is to elect Select Committee chairs. The Speaker will inform party leaders how many chairs each party is entitled to, the distribution of chairs must reflect the party balance in the House, Labour have 63.2% of MPs (proportionally, 16.44 out of the 26 committees). Conservatives have 18.6% of MPs (proportionally, 4.84 out of the 26 committees). Others have 18.2% of MPs (proportionally, 4.72 out of the 26 committees), will the Govt will want to create any new committees or remove any existing ones?
The election of all Select Committee chairs chosen by the House takes place via secret ballot under the Alternative Vote system, where MPs express first, second, third, etc. preferences, which are then re-allocated until a candidate reaches 50% of the vote. Of the 34 Select Committee chairs at the end of the last Parliament, 10 have retired from the House, 7 lost their seats at the election, and another 2 have been appointed ministers (so far). So the committee chairs are likely to see a substantial amount of turnover.”
Regarding the Tory Leadership election there is no news how or when this will take place, the Con Home poll suggests 68.6% want Sunak to remain as leader while the election takes place, while 28.6% would like him to step down for a caretaker leader. If the latter happened the October Conference could be a valuable platform/beauty parade for all the contenders to share their ideas. The list of speculated contenders is growing and now includes Mel Stride, Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Suella Braverman, Robert Jenrick, Jeremy Hunt, Priti Patel and Tom Tugendhat, a joint ticket between the latter two has even been suggested. There’s a possibility of David Cameron as the caretaker leader since he has declined to be Shadow Foreign Secretary.
Suella Braverman missed the opportunity for her big pitch at London’s PopCon event, she was in Washington at the National Conservative Conference. Had she appeared in person at PopCon she would have enjoyed a bigger audience and better headlines. Instead she appeared to ramble on, larger than life in a speech recorded on a laptop. Is Suella a potential convert to Reform, could Suella lead a few right wing Tories over to Reform?
Next week the Tory Reform Group and the One Nation Conservatives gather for their summer parties and to identify their leadership candidates.
Bob Blackman is the new Chairman of the 1922 Committee, who will lead the Conservative backbenchers, Blackman won by 67 to the 31 votes cast for Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown. There was a bit of a hiatus over the timing of the vote as some MPs were told voting ended at 6pm when it actually ended at 5.30pm, Jeremy Hunt and Mark Francois were among those unable to vote.
It is reported that Sue Gray, Starmer’s Chief of Staff, has not unexpectedly decided not to continue with Sir Tim Barrow as US Ambassador preferring either Peter Mandelson, David Miliband or Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s Former Chief of Staff.