Sarah Mackie @lumi_1984

Oooooft.

Bercow: 'I have no intention of taking lectures on doing right by Parliament from people who have been conspicuous in denial of, and sometimes contempt for it...and I will not be pushed around by agents of the executive branch'

I have no intention of taking lectures on doing right by Parliament from people who have been conspicuous in denial of, and sometimes contempt, for it. I will stand up for the rights of the House of Commons, and I will not be pushed around by agents of the executive branch. They can be as rude as they like, they can be as intimidating as they like, they can spread as much misinformation as they like, it won't make the slightest bit of difference to my continuing and absolute determination to serve the House of Commons. And unlike some people in important positions, who of course are elected constituency members but have not been elected to their offices here, I have been elected, re-elected, re-elected and re-elected as Speaker to do the right thing by the House of Commons. That's what I have done, that's what I am doing, and that's what I will go on doing. That is so crystal-clear that I feel sure it will satisfy the honorable gentleman.

Unexpectedly, the 1997 referendum on Welsh devolution is back in the news.

Setting aside Theresa May's misremembering/rank hypocrisy [delete according to taste] concerning her own and her own party's position, the lesson of Wales 1997 is actually about 'loser's consent' 1/

Welsh devolutionists (led by Ron Davies) fully realised that there was a real legitimacy question resulting from the very narrow referendum result. They worried about it, thought about and got people like myself to brief them about it in pretty lurid terms 2/

And to the extent that these things are possible, they deliberately set about trying to generate 'loser's consent' for the result.

* By involving opponents of devolution in discussions about the internal processes that would be adopted in the new National Assembly 3/
* By being unusually cross-party in their approach during the parliamentary passage of what became the 1998 Government of Wales Act (kudos here to the Wales Office team of Ron Davies, @PeterHain and Win Griffiths)

4/
In other words, they realised that the referendum result was only a fragile mandate on which to build a new constitutional dispensation for Wales. That mandate had to be shored up. Undergirded. Supported.

5/
And the only way to do that was to be cross-party and to do what they could to reach out to and address the concerns of their opponents.

It helped, of course, that this approach 'went with the grain' of that particular ministerial team. There were also willing interlocutors

6/
But the fundamental point was that they realised that the narrowness of the referendum result meant that they simply had to make every effort to build consent among those who had been opposed as well as those who just hadn't bothered to participate in the vote.

Sarah Mackie @lumi_1984

Oooooft.

Bercow: 'I have no intention of taking lectures on doing right by Parliament from people who have been conspicuous in denial of, and sometimes contempt for it...and I will not be pushed around by agents of the executive branch'