THE newly elected speaker of the U.K. House of Commons, Lindsay Hoyle, has a fearsome task ahead of him — to steer the parliament through Brexit. A Labor MP for 22 years and a deputy speaker since 2010, Hoyle has never publicly declared his views on Brexit and his closely-guarded neutrality is seen as an asset in trying to wade through the Brexit impasse. The 62-year-old, who is known for his friendly manner when dealing with MPs, has vowed to transform a “toxic parliament.” “I will be neutral, I will be transparent,” Hoyle said after his colleagues carried out the parliamentary tradition of dragging him to the speaker’s chair. “We’ve got to make sure that tarnish is polished away, that the respect and tolerance that we expect from everyone who works in here will be shown and we’ll keep that in order.” Welcoming him to the role, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: “Over the years I have observed that you have many good qualities.” “I believe you will also bring your signature kindness and reasonableness to our proceedings and thereby help to bring us together as a parliament and a democracy,” the prime minister said. However, Hoyle had not too long to get comfortable as the parliament was dissolved late Tuesday for the Dec. 12 election, after which he will return to sit in the speaker’s green chair. The new speaker will now give up his party affiliation while rival parties are traditionally not expected to field a candidate to contest his seat in elections. Choosing a new speaker has been an unremarkable event in the past, but Hoyle’s predecessor, John Bercow, became a key player in the chaotic process of Brexit. With the Commons divided over how, when and even if Brexit should happen, Bercow oversaw more than three years of crucial debates that defined the course of Brexit. His supporters say he has empowered ordinary MPs by granting time for emergency debates and amendments, which had the effect of pressuring or even tying ministers’ hands. But critics accused him of subverting centuries of parliamentary tradition with the aim of frustrating Brexit. With his northern English accent and blunt manner, Hoyle has a contrasting style to the verbose Bercow. And he is likely to adopt a more cautious approach than that taken by Bercow. Conservative lawmaker Charles Walker, who backed Hoyle, said he hoped the new speaker would bring “a period of calm and reflection.” Hoyle is as unimpressed as his predecessor by the shouting and braying from MPs, once chastising Scottish Nationalists for humming the EU anthem “Ode to Joy” in the chamber. Hoyle pledged in an interview published in the Sunday Times — in which he introduced his parrot “Boris” — to repair what he claims has become a “toxic parliament.” Named after the loquacious prime minister, the 4-year-old parrot has already mastered the speaker’s cry of “Order, order!” “I don’t want the abuse of each other and I think we have got to close that down quickly and make sure it is a calmer place to be,” he said. Boris the parrot presides over Hoyle’s menagerie, which includes Betty, a Patterdale terrier named after the former Speaker Betty Boothroyd, Gordon, a rottweiler who has a “clunking paw” like his namesake, Gordon Brown, and Maggie, a tortoise who has a “hard shell and is not for turning” after the late Tory prime minister. Hoyle said one of his first acts as speaker would be to hold an emergency summit with party leaders aimed at stamping out “bear pit” politics. Speaking on the eve of the speaker election, Hoyle said he hoped to heal the wounds inflicted by a divided and fractured parliament. “Some of the decisions that John Bercow has made in the chair have been quite unprecedented. They’ve been very unexpected. Some MPs have loved them. Some MPs have loathed them,” said Alice Lilly, senior researcher at the Institute for Government think tank. “We’ll have to wait and see whether the new speaker faces similar conditions with Brexit and minority government. If we have a majority government, it might be that actually Commons procedure becomes a little bit less crucial.” Hoyle was born in Adlington, Lancashire, in 1957. His father was Labor MP Doug Hoyle, who named him after Australian batsman Lindsay Hassett. The young Hoyle went to private Lord’s College in Bolton and ran his own screen-printing firm before becoming an MP in 1997. He has been a deputy speaker for nine years, and unlike Bercow, he has been straight talking, down to earth and has mostly avoided the sort of controversy and clashes with ministers that Bercow appeared to relish. In the days after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in August 1997, Hoyle asked for a new national children’s hospital to be built as a memorial to her. A few days later, Hoyle wrote to airport operator BAA, operators of London Heathrow Airport, urging them to change the airport’s name to Diana, Princess of Wales Airport. Neither proposal was carried out. Hoyle once clashed with then-Prime Minister Tony Blair over issues such as Gibraltar and tuition fees. Regarding those clashes, Hoyle said: “I’m not anti-Tony; he made us electable and won three times. But there are principles and promises you don’t break.” He has a sunny, cheerful personality in and out of the Commons chamber. But when he’s firm with troublemakers or windbags in the chamber, he’s tough and doesn’t take any nonsense. He’s been widely complimented for his approach to handling George Osborne’s Budget debates in 2013, which has been part of his job as chairman of Ways and Means. Away from politics, he is a supporter of his local football league team, Bolton Wanderers. He enjoyed the banter over his strange photo he tweeted watching England’s Rugby World Cup defeat, where he appeared to be looking away from the TV. Probably his most heated clash with an MP — so far — was with Scottish National Party’s Alex Salmond in a Brexit debate in 2017, with the pair shouting at each other across the chamber over time slots given to Brexit scrutiny. But behind the fun and the smiles, Hoyle has faced heartbreaking personal tragedy in the past years. In December 2017, his daughter Natalie Lewis-Hoyle was found hanged in her bedroom. She was 28 and had been in what was described at her inquest as a “toxic relationship.” Holding back tears, Hoyle paid a heartbreaking tribute to Natalie after winning the election Monday. “There’s one difficult part I want to get over. There is one person who is not here,” he said. “My daughter Natalie. I wish she’d have been here. We all miss her as a family.” During the inquest into her death, Natalie’s family said she had been involved in a coercive relationship plagued by “gas lighting.” Natalie’s mother, Conservative Maldon District Councillor Miriam Lewis, set up a charity called “Chat with Nat” to help other victims who feel they have no where to turn. Hoyle married twice. He was previously married from 1974 to Lynda Anne Fowler before they divorced in 1982. In June 1993, Hoyle married Catherine Swindley, who succeeded him as the Labor Councillor for Adlington in May 1998. He has also employed his wife as his part-time constituency secretary. Hoyle’s elder daughter, Emma, used to work at his constituency office, in which capacity she represented him at Chorley Borough Council. Natalie Lewis-Hoyle is the daughter Hoyle had with Lewis.(SD-Agencies) | 