He has drawn the ire of his compatriots on both sides of the aisle during his tenure as Commons Speaker – and perhaps no more so than since the Brexit vote in 2016. But it turns out John Bercow has some unexpected fans abroad – including China’s ambassador to the World Trade Organization.
Zhang Xiangchen praised Bercow’s often divisive Commons manner on Tuesday and suggested the body follow the Speaker’s lead on a ruling thought controversial by many pro-Brexit MPs.
The Speaker is the chief officer and the highest authority in the House of Commons. They chair parliamentary debate to call MPs to speak, to keep order, and to instruct when votes should be taken.
The speaker is expected to remain politically neutral on all issues, and to continue this even in retirement. On appointment as speaker, they resign from their political party. They continue to stand for election as an MP, but by tradition they are unopposed in their constituency by the major parties.
The speaker has the power to compel MPs to withdraw remarks, to suspend individual MPs, or to suspend the whole sitting of the House of Commons in case of serious disruption.
The current speaker is John Bercow, who was elected into the role by MPs on 22 June 2009.
Despite the neutrality required in the role, Bercow revealed that he voted remain in the EU referendum. Critics have subsequently accused him of using his position to undermine Brexit. In January, Crispin Blunt, a Brexit supporter, told him: “Many of us will now have an unshakeable conviction that the referee of our affairs, not least because you made public your opinion and your vote on the issue of Brexit, is no longer neutral.”
“I very much like the style and the voice of John Bercow, who is the speaker of the House of Commons,” Zhang said. The ambassador cited Bercow’s “important decision” that the British government could not bring the same Brexit deal back for repeated votes during the same session without substantial changes, based on a rule dating from the 17th century.
“I think perhaps we should consider having similar rules to ensure the quality of our discussions,” Zhang added.
The WTO has been at loggerheads over potential reforms for far longer than the Westminster wrangling triggered by the UK’s vote to leave the European Union.
While the UK’s protracted exit may not be a model of the way to conduct international trade relations, Zhang told a meeting in Geneva – where the US ambassador reiterated proposals to change the rights of developing countries at the WTO – that he had been watching the Brexit debates on television.
And his comments about Bercow attest to the regard in which the Speaker is held in some countries. The Dutch newspaper, De Volkskrant, recently ran a profile of him headlined: “No one on the British island can call ‘order, order’ more beautifully than John Bercow”.
In the article, the paper said the “only order in British politics comes from” him. It noted the “louder, boisterous and, yes, more animal than ever” in which he shouts “order” during parliamentary proceedings.
According to the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, Bercow is “impossible to live with, often unbearable, but irreplaceable”, while Radio France Internationale named Bercow its “European of the week”.
