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”.