You may’ve heard that Nick Clegg was pushing ahead yesterday with his plan to make constituencies across the UK of a similar size.
While announcing it to the House of Commons, he came into conflict with Isle of Wight MP, Andrew Turner, who has previously struck us as unrileable.
While Nick Clegg was announcing that there’d only be two exceptions in the UK – Orkney and Shetland, and the Western Isles, in Scotland, Andrew Turner shouted out, “What about the Isle of Wight?”
Video after the jump
The Speaker interjects
The Speaker of the House, John Bercow, was forced to interject, “Order. I am sorry to have to interrupt the Deputy Prime Minister, but Mr Turner must not, however strongly he feels, shriek from a sedentary position in that way. It is very unseemly and if, I may say so, very untypical of the hon. Gentleman, who is normally grace itself.”
Sedentary position
Most of Bercow’s words are easily understandable, but one part needs translating. “Sedentary position” is explained on TheyWorkForYou, as
“In the process of debate, members of parliament need to stand up in order to be recognised and given a turn to speak, and then they formally make a speech in the debate. “From a sedentary position” is Commons code for “heckling”.
“Very disappointed”
Speaking today, Andrew Turner commented on the situation, pledging that he will not give up the fight for the Island’s unique status to be recognised
“I am very disappointed that Nick Clegg has not yet recognised the unique status of the Isle of Wight. I will be fighting on to try to make him see sense. I fully support reducing the number of MPs – but not at the cost of losing long-recognized historic and geographic boundaries.
“I called a debate on 15th June about this issue – and was told then that no final decisions had been made. It seems now that Mr Clegg was prepared to listen to the arguments for the Scottish Islands, but not for the Isle of Wight – even though the Scottish Islands are much smaller constituencies than the average.
“I am contacting the Island’s Labour Party and Liberal Democrats and will be asking them to support me in fighting this proposal. A number of Islanders have raised this with me and they are all against it!
“If the Boundaries Commission increased the average size of constituencies to the 110,000 voters we have on the Island we would only need 413 MPs – that would be a very real saving!”
Image: Alan Cleaver under CC BY 2.0
