Michael Martin: Out of order, Mr Speaker

The first commoner. That's the official description of the Speaker's position in society. It's a prickly soubriquet as things are just now. The incumbent, Michael Martin, feels himself the victim of class war. He feels, it is said, the sting of public-school scorn. Commoner? Is even the constitution stigmatising him? It's true that, closer to home, there are those who call him "Gorbals Mick" (he comes from Glasgow); his claque are quick to level accusations of snobbery against their man's critics.

And critics there are aplenty, though none bases criticism on his origins. The Sun came closest, describing him as coming from the same chimp farm as Two Jags; Simon Hoggart, in The Guardian, compared him to a supply teacher in a sink school; Matthew Parris, of The Times, the most thoughtful and considered of the sketchwriters, saw him simply as "a drongo". The Independent's sketch had his face "red and throbbing like a haemorrhoid". That wasn't very nice, but it also crosses all class boundaries.

No, it was Quentin Letts of the Daily Mail who characterised him as Gorbals Mick, and the phrase, to judge by its appearance in other media, has caught on.

It hasn't helped Mr Martin's case that he sacked his secretary recently, it is understood, for failing to show sufficient respect. She called him Mr Martin. That was insufficiently respectful. He wanted to be called Speaker Martin. Or perhaps more correctly Mr Speaker Martin.

It's a peculiar formality in this man – and not because he's a former sheet metal worker – to insist on this almost 18th-century formality. He is the Speaker who has abandoned as many of the traditional trappings of the job as he can. The wig, the breeches, the remote and august position hovering above the Commons.

It took my politics master from school to point out the connection between his clothes and his behaviour. His refusal to don the old and peculiar costume is a sign of his particular refusal to put distance between himself and old friends on the backbenches. Because the most telling criticism of Speaker Martin has been his inability to ascend into the Elysium that Speakers have to ascend into. He's supposed to have left old acquaintance behind him. Dropped his old muckers. Thrown off his low associates. Emerged in a new state of being: impartial, scrupulously fair, a Speaker of the whole House

Here you go, a late 19th-century quote from Speaker Arthur Peel (son of the more famous Sir Robert): "I know how necessary it is for any man who aspires to fill that great office to lay aside all that is personal, all that is of party, all that savours of political predilection, and to subordinate everything to the great interests of the House at large."

Mr Martin didn't do it. After his election he continued to hang out in the corridors of the Commons and in the tea room. Unheard of. Old Labour members whom you would describe as anything other than "public school snobs" reported him fraternising and canoodling in a particularly unSpeakerlike way.

Last century, Speaker Horace Maybray King wanted to dine occasionally in the Members' dining room. And at the table reserved for the clerks, at that. No. A scandal. A delegation of senior members dissuaded him. Eat with MPs! Are you mad?

There may be a Blairite failure at the bottom of the Speaker's soul – a desire to be liked. It's not something Lord Hailsham suffered from: "You have got to be rather frightened of the Speaker in the House of Commons, if you really want the House at its best. I have known Speakers go bad because they want to be loved too much. This is not at all possible."

It should be noted this was said before Betty Boothroyd, but it's still an idea worth holding on to. No, Mr Martin has made a pig's ear of it, so far. He still has not grasped this fundamental principle of impartiality. He doesn't see that it's important. After initial rumblings about his treatment of Tories (he was shutting them up more quickly than his own lot), after the indignation about him winking and grinning at his own side, after all that, he threw a Tory out of the chamber with the forthright words: "The member will take himself from the House!" The following day he excused himself by saying that he had merely been inviting the member to sit down. You expect, wearily, politicians to say the thing which is not, but then, Speakers are not politicians.

No, but he still hasn't got it. His instinctive partiality and casual relationship with the truth combined in the remarks he made after David Blunkett had announced changes to the asylum-seeking regime. Mr Martin rose "like a judge in a Eurovision Song Contest" according to a sometime clerk of the House, to say: "Oh, I like that one!"

What he actually said was: "I welcome vouchers being abolished because, as I know from experience in my own constituency, they take away people's dignity." Was he badly advised? "He wasn't advised at all! Bill MacKay [chief clerk of the House] would have had a fit!" my ex-clerk says. "It's absolutely implausible he would have known what the Speaker was going to do. I can't tell you how shocking it was."

The Speaker made a statement the following day that ranks as one of the more unpleasantly evasive statements in a competitive parliamentary field. "I made a comment from the Chair which some observers have interpreted as a political statement." In what way it wasn't a political statement has yet to be established. "I wish to assure the House that I am wholly committed to the long-standing tradition that the Speaker stands aside from politics."

A new development, perhaps. "If, contrary to my intention, my remark was subject to the interpretation that has been placed on it" – he refrained from saying by public-school snobs – "I seek the indulgence of the House." The Speaker also included a reference to the murder of a young asylum-seeker in his constituency as an extenuating circumstance for his remark. That compounds the offence, you may feel, mixing an error of taste with the one of judgement.

Michael Martin was born quite shockingly recently. He's only 56 but could easily pass for a decade older. It's been a hard life, you'd have to think. Goodness knows, not many of us know how hard the Gorbals is. His father was a merchant-navy stoker and his mother a school cleaner. She died 30 years ago of cancer of the womb.

His constituency has one of the highest levels of council-house tenants in Britain, and two of the tallest tower blocks in Europe. He's got around the highest unemployed in Glasgow with all the attendant problems – particularly drugs.

He was one of Lord Callaghan's "lost generation" of Labour MPs, coming to the Commons in 1979, from the Glasgow District Council. He is billed in Roth's Parliamentary Profiles as a "plain-spoken, warm-hearted, locally rooted mainstream moderate Glasgow trade unionist".

He fought against Militant and survived, and he has taken a very robust attitude to the Scottish National Party, accusing them of being solely motivated by hatred of England. He once stood up for the right-winger David McLean, which isn't something that every Conservative could say, hand on heart.

A nice man, depending on whom you ask about him. Not such a nice man, depending on whom you talk to. We all heard that one of his persistent critics had been approached by a silk-stockinged gent who uttered a veiled threat to remove the critic's parliamentary pass.

"Approaches homosexuality and abortion from a Catholic viewpoint," Andrew Roth tells us. He voted against reducing the foetal age at which abortions could be carried out, and he voted against lowering the age of homosexual consent – one of only six Labour MPs to do so; he is not without moral courage.

His highlights include: voting for Tony Blair and John Prescott in 1994; leading the campaign to get lobby journalists off the House of Commons terrace; backing the Gordon Downey campaign to restrain MPs' abuses, after a Department of Trade and Industry junket to China. He was a deputy Speaker for some years before his election as Speaker. And that last item reminds us that he wasn't exactly new to the job.

So what's it like being Speaker? The perks, pay and pension are brilliant. The status is far higher than you would think. The apartments are regal. The peerage is enjoyable. And the afterlife is heavenly – he'll belong to the most exclusive club in the world.

Then again, Speaker King described the stress of office is "unimaginable". Speaker Hylton Foster's widow claimed the pressures of the job helped her husband into an early grave, and that her father, another Speaker, had his health ruined by it.

There are pressures, because there are things that Speakers can do. He has a casting vote, though previous incumbents have been constrained to cast it in one of two strictly defined ways. Two Speakers this century (Lloyd in 1974 and Thomas in 1976) have had to cast such a vote. It's not something that will matter much for a while yet, but who knows? Would Speaker Martin vote according to convention or according to the government whip?

He chooses amendments, and the order they are debated in. He rules on whether a bill is a hybrid Bill or not. (If so, it requires special procedures, and that very ruling has caused controversy in the past: on the nationalisation of aircraft industry, and of shipping in the 70s. Let's not go there.)

The Speaker can certify a Bill as a money Bill (in which case the House of Lords can only delay it a month instead of a year). When the Lib-Dems pursue their argument as to which party should be called the official Opposition, that question will be decided by the Speaker.

When the government wants to curtail debate, one of its whips will move "that the question be now put". But it won't happen if the Speaker believes "such a motion is an abuse of the rules of the House, or an infringement of the rights of the minority". His discretion is absolute. "The mere knowledge that the power exists prevents the closure being demanded if there is any likelihood that the Chair would refuse it."

Hmm. You'd have to wonder whether the knowledge that the power is in Speaker Martin's hands would prevent anything at all. Still, the House got him, the House will keep him. He'd have to be caught, like Speaker Sir John Trevor in 1695, taking money to ease a Bill through the House to lose his job. And even the Speaker's enemies wouldn't accuse him of that order of dishonesty.

Michael Martin: a biography

Born: Michael John Martin, 3 July 1945, in Anderston, Glasgow.

Parents: Michael and Mary Martin.

Family: Married Mary McLay in 1966; one son, Paul Martin (member of Scottish Parliament) and one daughter, Mary.

Education: St Patrick's Boys School Glasgow (which he left without any qualifications); passed Italian O-level at the age of 42.

Jobs: Sheet metal worker; AUEW shop steward, Rolls-Royce 1970-74; trade union organiser, 1976-79.

Political career: councillor on Glasgow Corporation and Glasgow District Council; MP for Glasgow Springburn since 1979; parliamentary private secretary to Denis Healey 1981-83; member of the Select Committee for Trade and Industry 1983-86; Speaker's Panel of Chairmen 1987-2000; First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means and deputy Speaker 1997-2000; became 187th Speaker of the House of Commons in 2000.

Salary: £114,543 per annum.

Nicknames: "Gorbals Mick", "The guy in the tights", The richest man in Springburn", "Metal Micky", "The boiler-suited and booted one".

Hobbies: Hill-walking, folk music, local history, playing the Highland pipes (member of college of piping).

He says: "A Speaker has a clear duty to every side of this House, especially to the backbenchers, the minority parties and the opposition parties."

"There's no shame in having an accent. The same people who criticised me for having one would have criticised me for trying to hide it."

They say: "In Michael Martin, the Commons has elected a man who is sure in his own beliefs and has not become a creature of the system" – Conservative MP Derek Conway.