THE SPEAKER JOHN BERCOW 'CALL TO ORDER' AND 'UNSPEAKABLE'

Ceremonial Speaker

It’s not just the thin numbers now permitted. The House of Commons has become a quieter, drearier, more dismal place than it was. The sparkle has long gone. The humour has evaporated and it feels sadly irrelevant so different from its roistering glory days before.his virtual sacking.

The ousting of John Bercow from the Speaker’s Chair marked the end of an era. In that time this dynamic vociferous man shone a spotlight on Parliament and for good or ill, made it into the very centre of British politics. Even his worst enemies – and he clearly has plenty – would admit the House of Commons is now a pale and shadowy place next to the colourful showy circus where he once held sway. 

These two books, one a sometimes snarky analysis of his career with views   on his character from all sides expressed, the other is his own account of himself often entertaining and frank but unsurprisingly defensive. 

Being John Bercow was never easy. Born in London to a Jewish father and gentile mother, he carried a double burden -a scarred acned face and he was short. Yet he always claims being a ‘little guy’ didn’t worry him, whereas the taunts about his ‘crater face’ always did. His father had many jobs, and as Sebastian Whale lists his varied career, his time as a mini cab driver didn’t last long. The label stuck though. In the corridors of Power in Parliament – JB got there on his third attempt - fellow Tory MPs would call out “ Taxi!’ as he passed: the senior Conservative grandee Nicholas Soames, grandson of Winston Churchill’  – and this is from ‘multiple sources ‘ Whale tells us, would refer to Bercow as “Bercoff’ in evocation of his Jewish heritage.‘’ A whip at the same time used to call Bercow Bercoff. In November The Mail on Sunday reported that a Tory M.P. repeatedly greeted him with ‘Hello Jew boy’ “It’s only a tease Bercoff, the MP said ‘ No it isn’t Bercow replied ‘ you’re an anti-Semitic *****”

“In twenty two years I never experienced anti-Semitism from a member of the Labour Party . But I did experience anti-Semitism from members of the Conservative Party. . . I remember a member saying “ If I had my way, Berkoff, people like you wouldn’t allowed in this place” And I said “ sorry, when you say people like me, do you mean lower-class or Jewish?” to which he replied, ‘Both’”

John and Sally Bercow

John Bercow began his political life on the far right something he describes in his memoir as ‘shameful and obnoxious’. On his entry into parliament – for the Conservatives remember, he was the ‘attack dog’ on Tony Blair and his government. He joined forces in the marathon sixteen-and-a –half hour sitting to get the minimum wage passed – he thought it would keep down wages. Yet only two years later he had changed his mind “My mother always said it was a good idea and I should have listened to her”. He was not afraid of a change of mind. He had voted against the lowering of the age of consent for gay sex to sixteen years old, and worried that if he later backed this measure, which came up again in Parliament, his constituents would not approve. Yet he went ahead 

‘ I have changed my mind’ he said” The words ‘I was wrong’ do not readily trip off my tongue, but that is what I believe. I think it was a mistake to vote for the status quo last time  but this time I intend to vote for reform and I think, for progress“ despite as he recognized “it will incur the wrath of people I most admire in politics’ It did of course but also the admiration of others like Matthew Parris who in The Times next day declared ‘He rose as fast in what is rather grandly called ‘the opinion of the House’ in a nine minute speech as I have ever heard a backbencher do”

From that time onwards, John Bercow’s shift leftwards was slow but sure. Both he and his biographer agree that Sally had a lot to do with it. Educated at Marlborough School she was always a renegade, “ I didn’t really fit in with those in Alice bands and everyone coming from a house with a long drive’” She met John when she was twenty, a student at Oxford. He was six years older than her and six inches shorter.  She was beautiful blonde and outspoken. He had a drink with Michael Keegan in the House of Commons Bar Whale reports

Sally in the famous shot=from the Speaker’s House

“He told me that he’d met this amazing blonde. He was really taken with her” Keegan recalls, “ He was completely amazed ‘she had the remotest interest in me’”.

She did. They married and by the time they moved into the Speaker’s House, which sounds the most imposing and intimidating place, they had three young children and Sally was catapulted to the limelight from relative obscurity in Pimlico.” 

Her subsequent exploits over the next ten years became front line news. She was outrageous on Big Brother - she exited early much to her husband’s relief - she announced she might try ‘mexxy’ (methooxetamine) a drug recently banned by Parliament, and when she tweeted around the time of a sex abuse case “ Why is Lord McAlpine trending? Innocent face” found herself sued. She later apologized and paid in £15000 as the Judge in the case found that any ‘reasonable reader’ would understand this is to be insincere and ironical’. 

“I have learned my lesson the hard way” she said afterwards

She declined to go to Margaret Thatcher’s funeral. She argued that when you have “wrecked the country to have a funeral at the taxpayer’s expense costing three or four million pounds” was altogether wrong.

 And there was the portrait, “That was wrong, apparently“ she sighed when the shock waves of seeing the Speaker’s wife draped in a bed sheet sitting in the window of the ancestral building, reverberated round the cloisters in the Commons.

 On February 7th a review of Unspeakable gave it five stars ”I’ve just finished this and hugely enjoyed it. Fascinating account’ it ran “ he comes across as a genuine reformer who faced much hostility from the Establishment.” Strangely enough the author ‘Elizabeth Baxter’ also reviewed Capital by John Lancaster - signing off as Sally Bercow.  

She was seldom off the front pages, but caught kissing her dance instructor her defiant stand was consistent with her attitude all along “ It was taken out of context. I don’t need to apologize to John. I have done nothing wrong.”

In Unspeakable, John Bercow attests to turbulent times with David Cameron. In Call to Order, we learn about them in detail.  As Bercow walked into a restaurant shortly after arriving in the House of Commons, David Cameron waited until he was in earshot and announced to his large group of fellow diners, ”Even fuckwits like Bercow have got safe seats now!” Swiveling round theatrically, he said “ Oh Hello John”

Cameron was first off the blocks out of Oxford with a job with Conservative Central Office and then at Number Ten for John Major after only four years as an M.P Cameron put himself forward as leader. When Bercow was stopped in the lobby and asked if he would support him, his answer was swift “.No, I don’t like him and I won’t“. And he added to in a GMTV interview “In the modern world, the combination of Eton, hunting, shooting and lunch at Whites is not the most helpful when you want to appeal to millions of ordinary people.“ Samantha saw it and thereon in it was tense. Bercow reckons that when they ceased to play tennis together it disintegrated into enmity. They had been good partners “he was McEnroe intolerant of his own mistakes but tolerant of mine” he recalls, but when the team split up they were firmly at odds. In Unspeakable, he sums up his loathing of Cameron amusingly, ‘not just a spoon but  “Born with a silver trolley service in his mouth” and later, more directly “Insubstantial, lightweight, someone who saw politics as a game that it was his inherited duty, and right, to play and win… sniffy, supercilious and deeply snobbish.”

 One fun anecdote about the present Prime Minister in Unspeakable is rather good.  One of Bercow’s life disappointments was not to qualify as a tennis coach and he was an unbeatable whizz in the House of Commons tennis team. He played Johnson and applauds him in a typically self aggrandizing way, “He took his 6-0 6-0 6-0 defeat with very good grace.”Clearly there was some satisfaction in that match.

Increasingly Bercow got into trouble for his championing of progressive causes. Sebastian Whale recounts how shocked the House of Commons clerks were when he took the occasion of the State Opening of Parliament to applaud the Queen as ‘Queen of a Kaleidoscope nation and a Kaleidoscope Commonwealth’; there was outrage over this boldness in bringing the issues of race and diversity into the royal realm. Equally his decision to deny Donald Trump any address at all in Parliament brought him an avalanche of criticism, ironic in the light of this last week’s Capitol events. ” I feel very strongly that opposition to racism and sexism and to equality before the law are hugely important considerations in the House of Commons,” he argued. Leading Conservatives brought a motion of no confidence in him after this speech and during a visit to Israel, Bercow confided that he feared his Speakership could be soon over.

Not everyone disapproved of his Trump ban. Denis Skinner said “ Two words,’well done’”

Mobile Speaker in his glory days

In the bitter end he did go, forced out under accusations of bullying 

He left a legacy of reform.He tried to modernise the Commons. He overcame determined resistance from the die-hard traditionalists to establish a nursery for the use of MPs with small children (he took over one of the favourite bars of the House to create it). He joined the fight to improve staff pay and conditions. MPs on maternity leave were now allowed to vote by proxy. He championed the appointment of Rose Hudson-Wilkin, who became a powerful ambassador for parliament as its first woman and first non-white chaplain. She says she never had a cross word from John Bercow and their ten years together was unalloyed blissful companionship Rose Hudson-Wilkin says Westminster looks a little more like the country that it is supposed to represent after Bercow’s interventions. She is now Bishop of Dover, a post which the Speaker sponsored for her. Like his alliances with back bench minority MPs this stood for the values of a modern age, a new time many in Westminster were unwilling to allow. More. that that, he made Parliament more dynamic, he introduced “urgent questions”, which the opposition can use to force ministers to answer to the Commons at times when they would prefer to hide from scrutiny. His determination to be fair to both sides in the Brexit debates probably, thinks politicians like Julian Lewis, was his downfall. Whale quotes him in pre-election 2020 prophesying that the Brexit issue’ was largely a waste of effort and detracted from what was otherwise an admirable Speakership which brought up to date and strengthened the House of Commons to hold the executive to account’. Malcolm Rifkin says of his legacy “He will be remembered as a one-off as a very clever smart courageous Speaker but one whose flaws were as evident as his virtues’. Ken Clarke reckons ‘He is the best Speaker of my time in the House of Commons” (and remember Ken Clarke was the Father of the House having been there the longest) George Osborne agrees ‘He is one of the biggest and most important Speakers of our history “Jess Phillips in in accord:’ The things he wanted to be known for he will be known for; the idea of holding the executive to account and being a friend of the back benchers”

The debate goes on. But he is already missed one way or another.

The Bercows Re united