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Bercow detonates May's third vote with dramatic Brexit intervention

By Ian Dunt

John Bercow blew the whole thing apart. After years of petty sneers and active sabotages of parliament by the government, he finally took his revenge. And it was huge: dramatic, constitutionally-explosive and with far-reaching repercussions for Brexit and British democracy. Once he was done, the prime minister's strategy was in ruins.

This was a long time coming. The referendum had created a new kind of sovereignty in British democracy. Since the English civil war in the 1600s, sovereignty lay with parliament, which gained its legitimacy through the elections held by the public. But the referendum result created a new form of political legitimacy: that of direct democracy.

Theresa May used this every chance she got. She portrayed herself as the sole custodian of the people's will. What that will actually entailed changed almost daily. Once upon a time it opposed any transition. Now it supports both transition and an extension of Article 50. But this is what authoritarians always do when they mention the will of the people: they conflate it with their own.

With this political legitimacy behind her, she abused and ignored parliament. She tried to deny it a vote on triggering Article 50. She tried to rob it of any meaningful say on her deal. She stuffed the withdrawal bill full of statutory instruments allowing ministers to operate as mini-parliaments. She tried to block amendments to no-deal announcements. Instead of risking losing opposition day motions, she simply pretended they didn't exist and refused to participate in them. She ruled-out publishing government legal advice on the backstop and then, when parliament demanded she do so, tried to ignore it. She was found in contempt of parliament - a historic humiliation which in any other period would have triggered a prime ministerial resignation. She set a date for a vote on her deal, wasted days of parliamentary time debating it, then cancelled it when she thought she would lose. After that, she held it, was defeated, held it again, and was defeated once more. And then she decided she would have another go this week.

Throughout that process, the Speaker had urged her to treat parliament with more respect. He made the point time after time, especially when she delayed the vote on her deal. In return, government ministers accused him of being a double-agent for Remain.  "He's made his views known on Brexit," leader of the House Andrea Leadsom said late last year. "It's a matter for him but nevertheless it's a challenge and all colleagues need to form their own view of that."

But today, as May was holding last-minute talks in a bid to get the DUP on side, Bercow kicked back. And he kicked back hard.

There is a section on page 397 of the parliamentary rule book Erskine May which states that "a motion or an amendment which is the same, in substance, as a question which has been decided during a session may not be brought forward again during that same session".

Speaking to constitutional experts this morning, not a single one predicted he would go down this route. Most thought that the rule allowed for a very wide interpretation of what the "substance" of the motion was. For instance, it was not just about whether the deal had changed. It would also consist, in the words of David Natzler, a clerk of the House, of the "underlying reality" of the situation. So if, through conversations with MPs, Bercow thought there was a shift of support towards the deal - and the weekend newspaper reports suggested there might be - he should allow another vote as the "substance" of the matter had changed.

Not so. Instead he blew the lid off the whole thing. "If the government wishes to bring forward a new proposition that is neither the same nor substantially the same" as last week's, he said, that would be in order. But "what the government cannot properly do is re-submit to the House the same propitiation or substantially the same proposition as that which was rejected last week".

May had been allowed to hold her second vote because she had secured changed to it in the form of the joint interpretative instrument with the EU and a joint statement. But this time she hadn't even pretended to enter into talks with Brussels. The deal was the same. And therefore so was the motion. And therefore it was against the rules.

Bercow's analysis of what constituted the "substance" of a motion was much narrower than expected. The idea of a shift of MPs towards the deal clearly had no impact on him. And neither did he care much if the attorney general could be persuaded to say something new about the Vienna convention or the way the backstop operated. His test was whether something had changed in the deal itself.

That was pulverising. It destroyed the government's strategy. All May's parliamentary chickens had come home to roost. Her constant disrespect towards parliament, her attempts to bully it into submission, had triggered a counter-attack from the Speaker at the worst possible time. There is now basically no chance for her to hold another vote this week.

Westminster fell into chaos once again. And then, as the dust cleared, we were able to get a little more clarity on the options open to the prime minister.

The first - and Bercow heavily hinted that this was the best course of action - was for May to go the European Council meeting this week and secure changes.

There are two types available. Firstly, she can try and change the future relationship document - the non-legal part of the deal concerning the ultimate arrangements between the UK and EU. Brussels is willing to play with that part, although admittedly probably not to this timetable.

Secondly - and this will be far more tempting - she can ask for a two-option extension of Article 50, as per her motion last week. Option one is for a short technical extension if she gets her deal through parliament before March 29th. Option two is for a much longer extension of perhaps a year if she doesn't. She should, by virtue of having secured those extensions, be able to present her deal as substantially changed. Buit there is no certainty that the EU is prepared to allow a two-option extension.

There are other strategies. She can try to pass a motion on her deal which starts "notwithstanding the practice of the House" on repeat motions. This would allow her to get rid of the rule for this one endeavour. But the trouble here is that she would need a majority of MPs to support it and it is not clear that she could secure it. Several hardline Brexiter MPs were supporting Bercow on this today. Presumably many moderate Tory rebels would too. And Labour and other opposition parties would whip against it

She could try and skip the motion altogether and simply put forward her withdrawal bill, which would turn it into law. That would then act as the de-facto motion on whether the Commons backed her deal. But this is a very unwieldy way to proceed.

And finally there is the nuclear option, where she would basically switch parliament on and off again. This would involve crashing the session and putting forward a new Queen's Speech. That is dramatic and could have very far-reaching consequences. Some even think it could end up dragging the Queen into the dispute. May will be loath to try it and anyway probably cannot do so before March 29th.

Those are the options available to her. By far the easiest is to hope that an extension arrangement linked to the deal is a substantial enough change for Bercow to allow it. But it is now clear that, whatever she does, the Speaker is prepared to go way out on a limb to obstruct her if he disapproves. Her room to manouvre just significantly narrowed. And the extraordinary constitutional battle between the executive and parliament just reached a new and dramatic stage.

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What's Missing From Your Content Marketing Tech?

What’s Missing From Your Content Marketing Tech? Content marketing experts are a unique bunch When we asked Content Marketing World presenters about what’s missing in most content marketers’ tech stack, some waxed poetic, others imagined the possibilities, and others got practical, talking products and output That’s why we love them – a diverse group of answers means a diverse group of thinkers “Every content marketer is missing something from their tech stack Content marketing is a delicate, interconnected ecosystem – you have to have the right technology for each aspect of the process,” says Scott Spjut , assistant vice president, social and digital content, Fifth Third Bank To tackle this, we’ve divided this post into three categories: Tools you can use now General concepts for tools that exist or should exist Non-tech ideas that affect (or should impact) your content tech stack Whether you’re looking for a new tool, imagining tools to create (or wishing they existed), or think tech is overrated, these responses will resonate 13 content marketing tech tools you can use now For pulling third-party content A great news aggregator like Feedly – Michaela Alexis , LinkedIn speaker, trainer, and co-author of Think Video For identity, insight, governance A data lake to bring together data from web analytics, marketing automation, and CRM – and tie it to an identity, plus: LiveRamp – identity resolution work PathFactory – for content insight and activation Acrolinx – active content governance (Disclosure: those three are Velocity clients but we’re huge believers) – Doug Kessler , co-founder, Velocity Partners For indexing and security Index Checking is a good way to see whether a page is indexed or whether you’re blocking it (sometimes developers forget to remove a noindex used during a redesign) SSL Check is helpful for sites that move toward HTTPS but have page elements like images that aren’t in secure directories The tool discovers the pages with issues.. – Mike Murray , president, Online Marketing Coach For Instagram scheduling Planoly for scheduling out Instagram posts – Griffin Thall , CEO and co-founder, Pura Vida Bracelets For real-life talk Talking to customers, where the tool involved is called the telephone Of course, one could also use Skype, Zoom, and related tools I like to build a complete picture of my customers, including aspects of their jobs (or lives) that extend beyond the use of my products or services – Dennis Shiao , consultant, Dennis Shiao Consulting For all to see Microsoft Excel or Tableau – a platform that gives marketing visibility into the other business units, such as sales and insights – Christine Michel Carter , creator, Mompreneur and Me For project management I use Trello as a workflow and project management tool Every project needs a tool or space that is a single point of truth – here’s the latest version, here’s all the related commentary, and here are the next steps – as at-a-glance as possible. – Jonathan Crossfield , chief consulting editor, Chief Content Officer magazine 21 content tech tool concepts Artificial intelligence I see marketers shy away from AI-powered marketing technology and startups until the adoption is higher. But now is the time to embrace the speed, insights, and agility AI-powered technology has to offer and get ahead of competitors – Jeff Coyle , co-founder and chief product officer, MarketMuse Bots-plus Co-bots are technologies designed to work best when paired with humans’ empathy, intuition, and judgment In contrast, black-box robot technologies are hard to explain or learn. Once set up, they tempt people to stop thinking and work on autopilot That’s why robots can be dangerous – George Stenitzer , founder and chief content officer, Crystal Clear Communications Content management Marketing operations need to consider a solid CMS Along with providing a place to document and track workflow of content production , setting up a CMS with the proper information to track for each piece of content developed can provide insight into the activity of published content, as well as a road map to content planning for the future – Pamela Muldoon , campaign and content strategist, The Pedowitz Group Organization and collaboration I don’t think there are enough brands focused on the efficiencies a CMP can bring to your organization Being more organized and collaborative helps you create better content – Zari Venhaus , director, corporate marketing communications, Eaton CMS focused on sales Sales-oriented content management systems that allow for appropriate seller tailoring – Seleste Lunsford , chief research officer, CSO insights, research division of Miller Heiman Group Texting Given the adoption of messaging by people (consumers and business professionals), a text messaging platform that is owned will be important for conversational marketing programs in the near term And you’ll want it to be yours, rather than Facebook Messenger – grow your own opt-in list/audience Chat is great. SMS/MMS can take it up a level when done well – Ardath Albee , CEO and B2B marketing strategist, Marketing Interaction Inc Away from the internet Offline sales or traffic attribution is a big investment, but we are too far into the data-driven future to still be guessing at how we place our media or how we evaluate our digital campaigns Walk-in traffic verification or look-back attribution matching can help us know what really drove the number we care about most: sales! – Jessica Best , vice president of data-driven marketing, Barkley All-in-one engagement analytics One-stop engagement platform that would pull in all engagements, regardless of where they occur, social, web (own), web (third party – think guest posts), etc would give the content creator a perfect picture of their most engaged fans – Tom Martin , president, Converse Digital All-in-one project management A tool that truly integrates all channels and workflows – Christoph Trappe , chief content officer, Stamats Business Media Process analysis Something that’s missing way too often is a tool that offers the ability to measure and optimize the process of content marketing It might be a project management tool , an Agile tool, or just a good old-fashioned whiteboard, but having access to basic efficiency data is shockingly rare for content marketers We need to know how long things take, where the bottlenecks are, who’s holding us up – pretty much just a snapshot of how our operations are going Without that basic level of information, we’re stuck when it comes time to try and figure out how to do more in less time – Andrea Fryrear , Agile marketing coach and trainer, co-founder, AgileSherpas Audience knowledge Audience data collection and analysis to drive story topics, execution, and distribution are needed Marketers often don’t have access to audience insights and are thus engaging in guesswork about what will resonate with their intended audience At The Washington Post, due to our state-of-the-art tech and audience surveys, we are fortunate to have access to data about audience behavior and interests We then use this data to inform the entire creative and promotion process, from selecting the right story topics to type of content to distribution strategy It’s all about the marriage of science and art Our program for Destination Canada illustrates this We found that people who are engaging in travel content are also reading a lot of food and history content This guided our decision to focus the story on a chef traveling to Canada to learn about his culinary roots – Annie Granatstein , head of WP BrandStudio, The Washington Post Reverberation Without a doubt, the ability to know what content is resonating, either by individual channel or by owned media content This is a giant blind spot I experienced for myself, and one of the reasons I wrote software for Trust Insights to fix it – Chris Penn , c o-founder, Trust Insigh ts Full-picture understanding More and more marketers express a desire for a smarter, more in-depth understanding of their metrics , but most have not invested in the tools (and customizations) to bring all their data into one cohesive system If your information is in three places and you can only look at them in PDF form, are you really getting the full picture? Can you answer the important questions your organization needs to answer? – Zontee Hou , co-lead of consulting, Convince & Convert Buyer journey analysis Few content marketers have the technology in place to accurately implement multi-touch attribution and understand all the points of contact in the buyer’s journey And that’s a bummer because it means we are too often giving too much or too little credit to pieces of content in our library and making decisions based on partial data – Erika Heald , marketing consultant, Erika Heald Consulting Efficient and effective distribution Despite tagging and other methods of ordering content, I feel there is a huge need for a platform that can sort and deliver the right content at the right time This (likely AI) platform would access all your content (blogs, podcasts, videos, whitepapers, etc) organize and sort it, and then deliver the perfect piece of content to the sales professional depending on who they are engaging on what level of the buyer’s journey I spend far too much time sorting through my own blog and YouTube channel to find exactly the right article to deliver when I see a buying activity online – Viveka von Rosen , chief visibility officer, Vengreso Listening Social listening , specifically for smaller companies with smaller marketing budgets Social listening is a great tool not just for understanding the sentiment surrounding your business but also for being able to act on that, including creating the right kind of content In the rush to create and to publish, this is something that can get missed – Dan Hatch , founder, Typeset Script crafting Script creation is important if you’re doing video and animation work because crafting good content for the visual medium is different than just straight-up content writing – Ben H Rome , manager, marketing and communications, AIHA Idea generation Content marketers need tools to help them understand what content to create – Michael Brenner , CEO, Marketing Insider Group Dollars and sense A tool to quantify the ROI of content It’s important to ensure the back-end is integrated so that you can see the content the sales team uses and the content prospects read – Pam Didner , B2B marketing consultant and author, Effective Sales Enablement Revenue effect I think most marketers are missing a tool that helps measure the impact of their content on the revenue they generate… what tool is it? Unfortunately, I don’t think that tool exists – Andrew Davis , author, The Loyalty Loop, Brandscaping, and Town Inc Content value chain I haven’t found a tool to measure the whole value chain of content marketing as it relates to business goals We’re awash in data and analytics but I’ve found nothing that allows you to measure the activity and results in your content marketing ecosystem against business goals – Sarah Mitchell , founder, Typeset A few less-techy thoughts Measure for now Are your KPIs still stuck in the sales funnel developed in 1924? Or are you considering the modern buyer’s journey ? (Today’s buyer has been described as “adlergic” and many are reading blogs before interacting with a sales rep..) Make sure you’re gauging content marketing success with the right tools and with KPIs that fit today’s buyer, not yesteryear’s – Julia McCoy , CEO, Express Writers Connections Authentic engagement is the tool that is most often lacking in the content marketing effort. – Yadin Porter de Leon , global executive content strategist Universal buy-in Most of us have the tools we need The struggle is getting cross-functional buy-in to use those tools in a collaborative and effective way – Amanda Changuris , manager, social media marketing, AAA – The Auto Club Group Look before you buy (again) Instead of looking at what’s missing from your tech stack, look at what you’re using and how you’re using it first More isn’t always the answer And remember even the biggest, best platforms won’t work miracles on broken content – Anna Hrach , strategist, Convince & Convert What content tech do you want? If you could sit at the drawing board with content tech innovators, what would you have them design? Let us know in the comments Or if you already have the perfect content tech tool, we’d love to share the good word Add it to the comments HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Read the full article