UK News 24-10-2000 Chaos of Commons Conkers and Coconuts who: Michael Martin what: Elected Speaker of the House where: House of Commons, LONDON when: Yesterday snippet: "Labour MPs wielded their overwhelming Commons majority last night," says The Telegraph`s political editor George Jones, "to install one of their number, Michael Martin, as Speaker against the wishes of their party leadership for a senior Tory to succeed Betty Boothroyd." In "a bizarre contest like a game of conkers," says George Pascoe-Watson in The Sun, all 659 MPs voted eleven times as eleven candidates queued up for over six hours to challenge Mr Martin`s nomination. The voting is really more like a coconut shy, argues Matthew Parris in The Times. At the beginning, Father of the House Sir Edward Heath surveys the list of candidates "and asks one of them to be coconut," he writes in his parliamentary sketch today. "He chooses another to take a shot. If the latter knocks the former off his perch, then he gets the chance to be coconut." "Mr Martin, a former sheet-metal worker brought up in a Glasgow tenement, clinched victory by 370 votes to 8," says The Independent. "The MP for Glasgow Springburn knocked out 11 rivals to become the first Roman Catholic Speaker since the Reformation." Of that there`s no doubt, but there`s a surprising lack of agreement among the papers as to how many other MPs have held the post to date. He is the 135th Speaker of the House according to The Independent and The Financial Times, the 187th according to The Times, 152nd according to The Guardian or, if you believe Telegraph, "the 156th Speaker since 1377". [... more]

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