Lindsay Hoyle elected new Speaker of the House of Commons – as it happened

That’s all from us this evening – thanks for reading and commenting.

If you’d like to read yet more, my colleagues Dan Sabbagh and Luke Harding have tonight’s main story:

Here’s a summary of the day’s events:

• Sir Lindsay Hoyle was confirmed as the new Commons Speaker, succeeding John Bercow. Hoyle won the election after four rounds of voting eliminated the other six candidates.
• The prime minister, Boris Johnson, lied during the Brexit referendum campaign, the outgoing president of the European commission said. Jean-Claude Juncker made the accusation in an interview with the German newspaper Der Spiegel, in which he also said pro-European politicians, including his friend Tony Blair, had helped lay Brexit’s foundations.
• Opposition party leaders complained about their exclusion from a head-to-head election debate, with the Lib Dems’ Jo Swinson claiming the decision relating her could be motivated by sexism. Swinson said the people choosing to exclude her from the ITV event could be “sexist”, or “scared”, or both. The SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon also warned broadcasters to reflect politics “as it is and not just how you want it to be”.
• Nigel Farage, the Brexit party leader, insisted his party would hurt Labour as he sought to play down the threat to the Tories. Nevertheless, Jacob Rees-Mogg called on Farage to “retire from the field”, citing his concern that the Brexit party could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by splitting the leave-friendly vote.
• Sinn Féin was among the parties to stand down in some Northern Irish constituencies to make way for remain-friendly candidates. Perhaps most notably, the party’s move opened a path to victory for one unionist candidate: the independent MP, Silvia Hermon. The nationalist SDLP also agreed to stand aside in some contests for a similar reason. Elsewhere, fragile unionist pacts were shaken – but held.
• Senior figures in the health service expressed alarm that the NHS was being used as a “political weapon”. They called for public debate about the NHS to be based on “realistic expectations”.
• Plaid Cymru kicked off its election campaign, accusing Boris Johnson of being “resolutely dishonest”. Adam Price, the party’s leader, also said Jeremy Corbyn had been “sadly proven ... clueless”. The party put Welsh independence at the centre of its programme.
• The former Labour MP, John Woodcock, announced he will not stand for reelection. Woodcock is standing down because he and his partner are having a baby.

LBC has confirmed that the Brexit party leader, Nigel Farage, will not host his radio show during the general election campaign, saying the step is designed to ensure compliance with Ofcom rules.

Farage actually addressed the issue as he closed his show last week, saying that remaining a broadcaster and the leader of a political party during an election campaign would “clearly” mean he would “have a bit of a conflict”.

The prime minister has written to the opposition leader, Jeremy Corbyn, demanding that he set out his position on Brexit and accusing him of wanting to “go back to square one” on the issue.

Boris Johnson, who himself voted against Theresa May’s deal twice – before eventually backing it at the third attempt, claimed Jeremy Corbyn had blocked his Brexit deal when it came before the Commons.

While Labour voted against the bill that would have implemented the deal, it passed its second reading in the Commons. Rather than being blocked, it was in fact pulled by the prime minister after MPs refused to allow him to rush it through parliament.

Accusing the Labour leader of spending “considerable time and energy seeking to undermine the [Brexit] negotiations”, Johnson said Corbyn has also “sought to avoid” setting out a clear Brexit plan of his own:

Your current position seems to be that you want to go back to square one. You want to throw out the great new deal we have reached with our European friends and, instead, negotiate a whole new treaty from scratch. Even assuming the EU agrees to go back to the very beginning, this will take months and possibly years to do – under your proposals, 2020 will be lost to more dither and delay over Brexit. Voters also have the right to know: What would your supposed Brexit ‘deal’ actually take back control of?

For months, you have refused to say what sort of ‘deal’ you want with the EU. Now the time has come for you to come clean, and explain what your plan really is so when the public vote on 12 December, they know what they are voting for.

Speaking to the Guardian today, Corbyn sought to set out his stance on Brexit, saying the party would negotiate a new deal with Brussels – including a closer trading relationship – within three months and put it to the public in a referendum within six. He has insisted Labour will stick to the plan not to declare a possible referendum position until after the election:

Two of the 540 votes cast were spoiled, Clarke told MPs.

Looking at the numbers, while Bryant again increased his vote by the greater proportion of the two candidates – about 26% – Hoyle almost kept pace with him; increasing his own by about 22%, having started from a much higher base.

In the end, it wasn’t that close. Hoyle’s winning margin of 112 represented more than half of Bryant’s total number of final round votes: 213.

It is true, of course, to say there is no base from which to start, with each MP being free to switch their support between rounds – even if their previously preferred candidate is still in the race. But, while each candidate does indeed start from zero in each round, it’s reasonable to assume a large proportion stuck with their candidate.

Back in March 2013, shortly after Hoyle successfully presided over a “boisterous budget day”, the Guardian’s former political editor Michael White profiled the then deputy speaker.

Hoyle’s handling of those proceedings, White wrote, had made him a “parliamentary star in pinstripes”. Here’s how Hoyle saw it:

So once a year it’s my day. I’m in charge and I look forward to it. It’s a highlight, the biggest day of the parliamentary year. The mood in the chamber is electric, you can feel the tension.

Here’s a little more from Hoyle’s moving tribute to his daughter, delivered from the Speaker’s chair in the Commons chamber. He told MPs:

There is one person who’s not here: My daughter, Natalie. I wish she’d have been here, we all miss her as a family; no more so than her mum. I’ve got to say, she was everything to all of us. She will always be missed but she will always be in our thoughts.

The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said Hoyle would “stand up for the principle” of parliamentary democracy”. He added:

The job of Speaker is not just a ceremonial one. It is about the rights of backbenchers to be able to speak up. It is about the power of parliament to hold the government to account. That is the whole principle and point of a parliamentary democracy; that we have a strong parliament that can hold the executive to account. And I know you will stand up for that principle because that is what you believe in.

Here’s a little more on the comments made by the prime minister after Hoyle took the Speaker’s chair. He said:

Mr Speaker, in congratulating you on your election I observe that you have prevailed over an extremely strong field and that every other candidate earlier on spoke forcibly and well.

Speaking for myself, after long, happy years of dealing with you, I think I know what it is. And let me say, whenever any of us is preparing to speak in this chamber, we all know there is a moment between standing up and when the Speaker calls you when your heart is in your mouth.

And, in that moment of anxiety about whether you’re going to make a fool of yourself and so on and indeed at the moment when we sit down amid deafening silence, the kindliness of the Speaker is absolutely critical to our confidence and the way we behave.

And, Mr Speaker, over the years I have observed that you have many good qualities and I’m sure you will stick up for backbenchers in the way that you have proposed and I’m sure that you will adhere to a strict Newtonian concept of time in PMQs.

But I believe you will also bring your signature kindness, kindness and reasonableness to our proceedings, and thereby to help to bring us together as a Parliament and a democracy.

Because, no matter how fiercely we may disagree, we know that every member comes to this place with the best of motives, determined to solve, to serve the oldest parliamentary democracy in the world.

And, to achieve our goals by the peaceable arts of reason and debate invigilated by an impartial Speaker, which was and remains one of our greatest gifts to the world. Thank you Mr Speaker, and congratulations.

Dame Eleanor Laing, who was eliminated after the third round of voting, has tweeted her congratulations to Hoyle:

And she has been joined in so doing by a host of parliamentary colleagues:

In his speech, Hoyle also paid tribute to Clarke, telling MPs:

I stand by what I said, I stand firm, that I hope this House will be once a great respected House, not just in here but across the world. It’s the envy and 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.

Boris Johnson rises to thank Clarke and congratulate Hoyle. He says the new Speaker “prevailed over an extremely strong field”. He adds that he believes it was Hoyle’s “signature kindness” towards MPs that led his colleagues to elect him.

Jeremy Corbyn adds his own congratulations to Hoyle and thanks to Clarke, saying the former will need eyes in the back of his head. He jokes about the photograph posted online at the weekend of Hoyle “apparently watching the rugby cup final while, at the same time, not watching the television”.

The image, Corbyn suggests, may be evidence that Hoyle does indeed have the requisite qualification for the job.

Hoyle is dragged to the chair in the traditional way by Caroline Flint and Nigel Evans and begins his remarks by thanking the other candidates. He jokes that there should be no clapping; one of the issues Bryant placed at the heart of his campaign.

And Hoyle pays tribute to his daughter Natalie Lewis-Hoyle, who died in 2017 and whom he says his family misses a great deal.

Hoyle closes by saying he does not want to detain MPs any longer and says the House will change for the better. For the first time, the new Speaker calls the prime minister to the dispatch box.

Sir Lindsay Hoyle has been elected as the next Commons Speaker, replacing John Bercow.

The favourite beat Chris Bryant by 112 votes in the fourth and final round, having already seen off Dame Eleanor Laing, Harriet Harman and Dame Rosie Winterton, as well as Sir Edward Leigh and Meg Hillier, in earlier rounds.

In total, 540 MPs voted in the final round; 25 fewer than in the previous one. Here are the results (with those from the previous rounds in brackets, beginning with the more recent):

• Sir Lindsay Hoyle: 325 (267, 244 and 211)
• Chris Bryant 213 (169, 120 and 98)

The Father of the House, Ken Clarke, has returned to the chamber and, it appears, is about to announce the results of the final round of voting in the election of the next Speaker.

Jeremy Corbyn will visit a 10th Tory-held target seat since the general election was called last Tuesday in a deliberate signal that Labour is determined to fight an attacking campaign, despite the anxieties of some of its MPs, my colleague Heather Stewart writes.

In Harlow, in Essex, he will give a speech about Brexit, following visits to a string of other areas, including Putney, Milton Keynes and Crawley. He will head north later in the week, when parliament has been dissolved.

Party strategists claim to have drawn up a list of almost 100 seats that could be within their sights, notwithstanding the Conservatives’ comfortable poll lead.

All three candidates appear to have benefited from the previous round’s eliminations but Bryant saw the greatest increase in support from the second round to the third.

• Chris Bryant: An increase of 49 votes, or about 40%
• Sir Lindsay Hoyle: An increase of 23 votes, or about 9%
• Dame Eleanor Laing: An increase of 5 votes, or about 4%