In a historic vote, US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted from his leadership position on Tuesday by a small group of radical members of his own Republican Party (GOP), led by Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida.

The Republican conference has been plagued with dysfunction for a while now. Still, the vote was a stunning display of just how broken and dysfunctional the system has become. Other House Speakers have been pushed out, and Republican Speaker John Boehner retired while facing a threat of being ousted. But this is the first time a sitting Speaker has been removed by a vote. Mr Gaetz exercised a little-known procedure that had not been used in more than one hundred years to push a vote to “vacate” the Speaker’s chair. When it was over, eight Republicans and every Democrat had voted to remove Mr McCarthy.