The Committee engaged in considering the question of the Speaker's
seat is likely, I gather, to advise against any change in the present arrangement, whereby the Speaker, as one of the 615 members of the House, stands in the ordinary way for an ordinary constituency, and has to take the chance of being opposed. If that is so, Captain Fitzroy may relinquish the Speakership at the close of the present Parliament, for he has declined to fight another contested election, and the Labour Party in his constituency (Daventry) has declined to forgo the right to run a candi- date. There have been various proposals for giving the Speaker, when once he is elected to that office, some special position that would remove him from the turmoil of the polls, but the House holds jealously to the tradition that the man who presides over its deliberations shall be a man standing on the same footing as his fellow-members. The Speaker is regularly chosen from the Government side of the House. Otherwise—and if a gift for chairmanship were the criterion—Major Gwilym Lloyd George would be the strongest candidate for the succession.
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