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The Speaker
The Speaker of the House Purple chairs every sitting, keeps order among 175 Members and has the final word on the rules. In Dingle, she also referees.
Speaker Beatrice Pugh
BP
Beatrice Pugh
Speaker of the House Purple
Beatrice Pugh was a Liberal Dinglecrat list Member before the House elected her to the Chair by secret ballot. As Article 57 requires, she left her party and gave up the whip on the day of her election, and she has been returned to the Chair at the first sitting of each House since. Nobody in the chamber dares mess with her.
She may look like a stereotypical Cotswolds Liberal, a slim woman with greying blonde hair and a smile you would expect at the door of a church fête, but looks deceive: she holds black belts in both Aikido and Capoeira, a wicked sense of humour and a sharp tongue. She is respected in the House as much as she is feared, and she always stands up for Members who deserve it.
The Times of Dingle once nicknamed her “Pughluigi Collina”, after the Italian referee widely regarded as the best in the world. It stuck.
“Hydration breaks? We’re not Yanks. Parliament TV doesn’t show adverts!”
The Speaker, declining a request from a Member during a 2026 debate on whether Dingle should enter a national team for the World Cup. The House laughed for three minutes and twenty-five seconds.
How the Speaker keeps order
The whistle
The Speaker brings the House to order with a referee’s whistle rather than a gavel. One blast settles the chamber; three open a major debate.
Yellow and red cards
A yellow card is a formal warning. A red card sends a Member out of the chamber for the rest of the sitting. Both are recorded in the official report.
VAR
Where proceedings are disputed, the Speaker may call on VAR and review the Parliament TV footage before ruling.
The Kuya Chronicles
The House’s rulebook, named after Dorothy Kuya (1933–2013), the Toxteth-born communist and anti-racism campaigner who became Liverpool’s first community relations officer. Any Member may put a question or comment, and any member of the Cabinet may reply. Contributions are limited to five minutes.
Points of order
Points of order are for matters of procedure, not opinion. The Speaker decides them on the spot.
Breaks
The House observes state-mandated breaks during long sittings, including fika, a Swedish custom of coffee and cake.
In an emergency
A glass panel beneath the Speaker’s desk reads “BREAK IN CASE IT’S A KRAZYHOUSE!” Breaking it sounds an alarm through the chamber and cuts the microphones until Members calm down. The Speaker keeps a megaphone for the purpose.
Inside the chamber
The House Purple sits on Scotty Road in New Childwall, Port Ringo. Two-thirds of the building is basalt for strength, pumice for insulation, andesite dyed purple for presentation and obsidian for the finer details. The remaining third is timber imported from Canada, under a great semi-circular glass dome, chosen to remind Members that the citizens they serve are always watching.
The Founding Das rejected the adversarial benches of Westminster. Every Member has an individual swivel chair and desk, arranged in a semicircle. The Cabinet sits in a row on a platform ten feet high, facing the House: not so high that Ministers think they are above everyone, not so low that they cannot be seen and heard. The Prime Minister has no plinth of their own. The Speaker does, directly above the Prime Minister, so that both the Government and the Chair face the Members they answer to.
The floor is green astroturf, with an 18-yard box and a semicircle painted around the Cabinet’s platform. Members vote on traffic-light voting pads: green for yes, red for no and orange to abstain, with sixty seconds to choose.
The Speaker and the Constitution
Article 57
The House elects a Speaker from among its Members by secret ballot at its first sitting. On election the Speaker leaves their party and gives up the whip. “Before electing anyone, the House shall bear in mind Article 53.”
Article 58
The Speaker keeps every power there is to run the chamber, and has no power to suspend a sitting to stop a Member speaking. That rule exists because of four minutes on 22 October 1985.
Article 53
If the office of President falls vacant, the Speaker becomes President at that moment and stops being Speaker and a Member.
Page last reviewed: 29 October 2029