Lindsay Hoyle’s justification for tearing up convention on the Gaza vote was that he had become worried for MPs’ safety and was trying to give members the widest range of options to express their view. It didn’t work out that way, as he acknowledged last night, and the Speaker will spend today in private meetings with the individuals concerned. Some of them showed signs of wanting to dampen the row down: Commons leader Penny Mordaunt, for instance, said she was grateful that he was reflecting on what had happened, adding: ‘You are our Speaker and we wish you to defend the rights of all Members of this House.’

Others were less positive: SNP Westminster group leader Stephen Flynn said he would take a lot of convincing to change his mind that Hoyle’s position as Speaker had become untenable. There will be plenty more drama in the Commons today, not least because it is the Thursday business statement, when MPs have a chance to air their concerns on a range of issues relating to the business in the House.

Hoyle’s well-meaning attempt to help MPs has unwittingly offered an incentive to campaigners

It’s easy to dismiss last night’s row in the Commons as MPs making themselves look ridiculous. To a certain extent, that is still what happened: the SNP erupted in rage when Hoyle selected the government and Labour amendments because this was, as they kept saying, the SNP’s opposition day debate, not anyone else’s.

There is an important principle and a less important one behind this rage: the first is that opposition parties should have the space to debate their motions without them being taken over by other parties, which is what happened last night. The second is the less impressive one, and not one the SNP would openly admit to: they had got Labour in a political bind and they were furious that Keir Starmer was being given a way out. It is difficult to deny this, though, given Flynn wrote an open letter to Labour backbenchers calling on them to support his motion – and piling the pressure on them publicly.

It wasn’t just SNP members who were angry last night, though. Tory MPs were furious, too: some of them staged a sit-in in the No lobby when the Commons was voting on whether to hold the proceedings in private. Others stormed out in protest. They were more angry with Hoyle because they felt he had yielded to the demands of the leader of his old party and helped Labour out inappropriately. Again, there was a partisan element to this which is that members want to see those from other parties, particularly Labour, put on the spot. But there is also a really serious principle here which needs proper debate.

Tory MP Charles Walker put it best in his point of order last night:

‘People are frightened. People have weaponised this debate in this Chamber. Whips are frightened for their flocks because Members of parliament now feel that they have to vote in a certain way in order to safeguard their safety and that of their family. That is a far bigger issue than the debate we are having tonight, because if people are changing their votes or their behaviour in this place because they are frightened of what may happen to them or their family out there, we have a real problem. So this point scoring off each other is not going to resolve many issues.’ 

MPs shouldn’t be changing their votes because of threats. That’s not how democracy works. It has, however, been sliding that way for a good while: members have been self-censoring and avoiding certain debates because of the amount of abuse they get on social media about a whole range of issues. But the idea that MPs would have to vote a certain way to calm the mob that was online, in their constituencies and indeed in Westminster yesterday is still a big move from that.

MPs have been under intolerable pressure in some cases. I have spoken to a number who have stopped going out on their own and who say they feel genuinely relieved when they get out of their constituencies. They also raised concerns with the Speaker last night about their safety: it wasn’t just Starmer who tried to make the case for the Labour amendment being selected using the safety argument.

Hoyle has come under a huge amount of opprobrium over the past few hours, and that will continue today. But just imagine the reaction if a Labour MP had been attacked or their children threatened and they linked it to the fact they hadn’t been able to vote for a motion they could support on Palestine. In the fickle world of Westminster, it’s entirely likely that the narrative this morning would be ‘why couldn’t the Speaker change the rules on this sensitive topic to help MPs stay safe?’ We are all excellent at hindsight, and when it comes to MPs’ safety, hindsight weighs very heavily when there have been two murders in the past decade.

The problem is that the Speaker’s selection will not make MPs safer, because it has suggested to the people putting this pressure on members that they can force democracy to move through threats. We all respond to incentives, and Hoyle’s well-meaning attempt to help MPs has unwittingly offered an incentive to campaigners to keep intimidating members. Neither parliament nor the political parties have really worked out how to deal with the new era of mob politics. But they’re going to have to learn fast.