Who is the Speaker of the House of Commons?

support politics on borings by going to patreon.com/scishow Forman oh thank you this man whose face you're looking at a photo of is the Speaker of the House of Commons his job is to make sure that MPs behave themselves in Parliament he decides who speaks and when throws numbers out if they break the rules and says order but he is the speaker surely it must be someone who's unbiased independent and impartial well guess what it's not [Music] MPs choose one of their own fellow MPs to be their speaker in the olden days the speaker's job was to keep the king informed of what's been going on in Parliament it was a thankless and dangerous job and a few of them got executed when the king was in a bad mood this has led to a tradition that continues to this day where the new speaker is ceremonially dragged unwillingly to their new position nowadays Speaker of the House of Commons is quite a cushy job you get a comfy chair with armrests chair you get to actually live in the houses of parliament and you can design your own coat of arms coat of arms the trade-off is once you become speaker you're no longer allowed to take part in parliamentary debates or votes the current speaker is the right honorable John Bercow Conservative MP for Buckingham so when mr. Bourke Oh became the speaker who took his place in Parliament who now speaks up for his beloved Buckingham who does the voting on their behalf no one and it gets worse there's a long-standing gentlemen's agreement between the major parties that in a general election the speaker's seat is uncontested that's why in TV election coverage there's always a more door like blank splodge on the mac labelled speaker so the residents of buckingham have a pretty raw deal not only do they not have a voice in Parliament they don't have a chance to get rid of their MP either yeah on the one hand it doesn't really matter because Buckingham is about the safest Tory seat in Buckinghamshire but on the other hand 97 thousand people are unrepresented in Parliament so what's being done about it John Bercow himself has said that this issue has to be looked into but has it been looked into having bobbins a few brave upstarts have tried to run as a candidate against the speaker most notably three times ex leader of you Kip Nigel Farage that didn't work he didn't in come second there just doesn't seem to be an appetite to do anything about it so it looks like the residents of Buckingham are stuck without a voice until a new speaker is picked and that probably won't happen until the current one resigns or if he's executed don't read a book while driving a car don't read a book while riding a bike do read a book by downloading the audible app and listening to audiobooks portable have lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of books usually read by the author what makes it better than reading an on audiobook my favorite audiobook that I'm listening to right now is that you're not by limit it's a very funny book go to audible.com slash Jay Foreman for 30-day free trial you can try it out that audible.com slash Jay Foreman for 30 day free trial thank you very much the end [Applause]

Channel: Jay Foreman

Views: 1,904,176

Keywords: Jay Foreman, Politics Unboringed, John Bercow, Speaker of the House of Commons, The Speaker, Speaker's seat, Buckingham, Politics, Election 2017, GE2017, documentary

Id: EqGoJN-zNXk

Length: 3min 28sec (208 seconds)

Published: Tue May 16 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Greddiio]

This post lead me to his channel, which got me to sub. So good job