Labour leader tells Bercow, “This Parliament… this democracy has been stronger for you being the Speaker” – and comments on Speaker’s ‘incomparable’ timing
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has paid fulsome tribute to John Bercow, after the Commons Speaker announced his plan to step down on 31 October.
Corbyn praised Bercow’s contribution to the UK’s Parliament and democracy, in particular his integrity in allowing MPs to hold the government to account. The Opposition leader also praised Bercow’s timing as ‘incomparable, [it] will be recorded in the history books of parliamentary democracy’:
Bercow’s successor will be chosen from among MPs. No candidates have yet declared their intention to seek the role. Though still an MP, Speakers do not vote except where a casting vote is required and by tradition, other parties do not stand in parliamentary elections against a Speaker, although this tradition has not always been followed.
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I think Corbyn was really speaking from the heart there. Sad though that Bercow is going. I wonder if the vile, vicious Tory attack dogs have nobbled him finally.
Ahhhhhh, that John Bercow. The Left Liberals nowadays, and Jeremy apparently, just love the man to bits —— despite his very well publicised serial serious bullying of his staff , and hammering of the Speaker’s parliamentary expenses budget for his own benefit. And that small matter, now of no interest to our Left Liberals, of John Bercow, in his student days, being chair of the pro-Apartheid Federation of Conservative Students. Most infamously, the group produced posters calling to ‘Hang Nelson Mandela’. As a Tory councillor, he produced The John Bercow Guide to Understanding Women, which gave advice on how ‘how to pick up virgins’. ‘Women’, he wrote, ‘will settle for anything that breathes and has a credit card’. Charming! Bercow’s wife, Sally Bercow, insists the speaker’s attitudes have mellowed since his days as a ‘right-wing headbanger’, but it is still striking that Bercow has been transformed into a hero of the liberal elite, merely because he has done so much to scupper Brexit in the Commons.
The ‘Left’, even in its tragic , ill-informed, Left Liberal form, surely needs to choose its ‘heroes of the moment’ a bit more carefully !
Oh God, Spend-a-Penny’s squeezed out another bad eggy one!
I’d leave it 10 mins if I were you…
(Deputy speaker) Lindsay Hoyle’s thrown his name in the hat apparently.
Bercow’s gonna be a very difficult act to follow. Certainly the best there’s been that I can remember. Took (takes) no shabbite from nobody and told (tells) it as it should be without fear or favour.
Wipes the floor with rees-smog and his alleged ‘unparalleled knowledge’ of parliamentary protocol and the so-called constitution…
i believe he was going to retire next year, this way he leaves as a respected hero of the parliament and not slung out like a dog by a tory mob. assuming that is that they were to win the election and i do not think they will.
this election will not be like the other one.
Idiotic piece. If Corbyn were Prime Minister facing a PLP chockfull of Blairites and an opposition of right-wing parties, a Bercow-type Speaker would be an unutterable catastrophe, empowering the backbench Blairites against the PM and Corbyn cabinet to the point of destroying the government. Viewed from this perspective the short-termism of Skwarkie’s analysis is appalling dim. The Left’s long term interests are far better served by Speakers whose non-partisan nature is beyond reproach.
Giving backbenchers a chance to speak instead of allowing the front benches to herd them like sheep and treat them as lobby fodder is good for democracy.
“Will the PM agree with me that…” questions from nonentities notwithstanding.
Arguing that a Corbyn government should be as undemocratic as the Tories would be without Bercow holding them to account isn’t socialist or democratic.
If CLP branch members get to select the PPC’s they want we can hope to present a united front – it’s not the speaker’s fault we’re divided and it’s not his job to back up any government whether Tory or Labour.
I think he’s been exemplary – for a Tory, obviously.
Bercow’s personal view of brexit is your real grudge against him. If he was pro-brexit you’d be lauding him to the skies.
Examples of his partisan decisions will prove me wrong but citing a bumper sticker as proof – won’t.
David l would much prefer a chair person appointed outside of the political arena and subject to a constitution!
” The Left’s long term interests”
You mean the ‘interests’ of you and a few mates playing politics instead of with the model railway in the nursery?
Danny and Spend-a-Penny, Skwawkbox’s very own Trust-fund Trots!
Just point and laugh, children! 😃
A Bercow TYPE…Maybe.
But Bercow himself? I’d be inclined to disagree, Danny.
Credit where credit’s due, Bercow’s pissed off the toerags more so than Labour during his tenure. He’s had them been bang to rights whenever necessary. They’ve had no easy ride offa him. ‘Nor should they’ I hear you say; but that’s not always been the case under his predecessors, not as I remember it anyway.
Small wonder the majority of the sour bastards didn’t show him any appreciation.
We have a lot of work to do if we are elected and a true democracy is of primary importance……The speaker would be obsolete and replaced?
You don’t have to be an over-the-top admirer of Bercow as a person o see that he has been as effective as possible in re-balancing the overweening power of the executive over the HoC.
It’s not a substitute for a proper constitution, but it’s as good as it gets under the present raddled set-up.
A canny move to get the election done before the Tories can re-group, and whilst the excesses of the current shower are fresh and bitter in the minds of their rebels (a lot of Tories who have been too weedy to speak out also think Johnson a shit).
Can someone be elected who will have the same ‘f. U’ attitude to the groupie ciphers?