As Europeans on the continent have watched the UK’s Brexit car crash, one figure offered some light relief to those new to the peculiarities of British politics.
The often thunderous pronouncements of John Bercow, the verbose Speaker of the House of Commons, have become the subject of numerous profiles in newspapers, and a fair few highlights videos, shared heavily on social media.
The Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant headlined its profile of the Speaker: “No one on the British island can call ‘order, order’ more beautifully than John Bercow.”
The article went on to suggest “the only order in British politics comes from John Bercow’s mouth in these turbulent days”.
“Louder, boisterous and, yes, more animal than ever, he shouts ‘order, order’, with which the 55-year-old House of Commons Speaker tries to calm down the members of the famous parliament.”
Despite his popularity abroad, at home Bercow is regarded as such an irritant to the government that speculation was swirling on Thursday night that he could be denied the customary peerage by Downing Street when his time as Speaker comes to an end.
No 10 insiders said that while they were “not pretending he’s wildly popular inside cabinet” they had “better things to think about right now” – although the ally of one influential cabinet minister said “it is definitely possible to block or refuse to nominate him” to the House of Lords if Theresa May were to chose to do so.
He would be the first Speaker in 230 years to have his peerage blocked.
An editorial in the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, which depicted the Brexit debate as a “black hole” – eating itself as it interminably chunters on – described Bercow as “impossible to live with, often unbearable, but irreplaceable”.
The German TV news programme Tagesschau compiled a 58-second video for social media entitled Order! Order! Order! that evidently delighted thousands, with a string of amused comments posted below on Twitter and Facebook. “Monty Pythonesque. Glorious,” one viewer tweeted.
Order! Order! Order! pic.twitter.com/WjvKZWGTPu
— tagesschau (@tagesschau) January 16, 2019
While some attacked Bercow for allowing a vote that will force the prime minister to come to the Commons within three days of having her Brexit deal rejected, some well-known European media outlets took the opposite view. The row was enough for Radio France Internationale to name Bercow its “European of the week”.
It is not known what Bercow, who even his admirers admit could not be described as publicity-shy, thinks of all the attention. In response to the criticism of his handling of MPs, Bercow, the Speaker since 2009, has been unapologetic.
“I’m trying to do the right thing and make the right judgments”, he told MPs this week. “That is what I have tried to do and what I will go on doing.”
