To say that John Bercow divides opinion at Westminster seems altogether inadequate. This week Bercow found himself in the eye of the biggest political storm of the many that have marred his eight years in the Speaker’s chair of the House of Commons. Or, rather, in this case he very deliberately placed himself there.
On Monday afternoon Bercow stood up in parliament and, for two and a half minutes, explained to MPs why he would oppose any proposal to invite Donald Trump to address parliament during the US president’s planned state visit later this year. It was an explosive act. The Speaker, whose office is historically impartial, distant and above controversy, was plunging into the political fray to take sides on a challenge to Britain’s most important international relationship.
To his supporters it was bold and brave, an exceptional act for the exceptional times created by Trump’s election. Scottish nationalist MPs burst into applause at the end of his speech. The Speaker’s postbag has bulged with approving messages ever since. Owen Jones wrote in the Guardian that Bercow spoke for Britain.
To Bercow’s detractors, on the other hand, it was another step too far. In a formidable tirade, the Daily Mail’s sketchwriter Quentin Letts described the intervention as a “red-eyed rant” from a “vicious, careerist, small-minded martinet” who wanted to get something “off his preening chest”. Others, unwilling to go on the record, were almost as scathing. Bercow was “a very, very nasty man,” said one. Monday’s attack on Trump was proof, said another, that Bercow’s Speakership was “an endless display of solipsism. It’s always all about him.” On Thursday the Tory MP James Duddridge tabled a motion of no confidence. Nothing will come of it, but it reflects a mood.
In retrospect, friends of Bercow now say, he probably expressed himself with avoidable directness. Bercow certainly opposes a Trump address to parliament, but his main objection is to Trump being invited to address the joint houses in the historic 11th-century surroundings of Westminster Hall, a special honour reserved in recent years for Nelson Mandela, the pope, Aung San Suu Kyi and Barack Obama. “If he had had notice, he would have tried to focus on the Westminster Hall issue and to speak more explicitly on behalf of colleagues rather than just himself. He would have said the same thing somewhat differently,” said a longstanding ally.
Yet Bercow’s outburst has a significant backstory. As soon as Trump was elected, last November, there was speculation that Theresa May would go to Washington as soon as possible and would offer a state visit to a man the UK government both fears and needs. MPs on all sides of the Commons, including the Tory grandee Sir Nicholas Soames, were appalled. Several got in touch with Bercow’s office late last year to signal their alarm at the possibility of a Trump address to parliament forming part of the visit, especially in Westminster Hall.
As a result, Bercow’s office wrote to May to warn her in writing of such feelings and to remind her of the issues, which included the fact that the Speaker was one of three officials whose permission is required for a Westminster Hall invitation. “We were concerned that a fairly new team in No 10 might feel they had to put Trump on a par with Obama, which was not the case since Obama is the only US president to address parliament in Westminster Hall,” said a Bercow supporter. No 10 acknowledged the Speaker’s letter well before May’s Washington visit in late January, during which the state visit invitation was offered and accepted.
When Trump issued an executive order within hours of May’s visit banning entry from seven mainly Muslim nations, hostility towards the visit spiralled. More than 200 opposition MPs signed a motion denouncing it, and 1.8 million people signed a petition for a debate in parliament. As a result, the May government – notably the leader of the Commons, David Lidington – began to have second thoughts about the Westminster dimension of the Trump visit and are now planning to avoid it altogether.
Although a final schedule has not yet been agreed with the White House, official thinking in London is now for a three-day Trump visit to take place largely over a weekend, from a Thursday to a Sunday and probably at a time when parliament is in recess. Possible dates are in late August or September. At present, planning for the visit now anticipates no address by the president to parliament in any form.
If that proves to be so, it will be game, set and match to the tennis-loving Speaker. Yet the repercussions of this week’s intervention by Bercow are likely to continue. No Speaker in modern times has changed the ancient role as much as the reforming Bercow, the first Jewish Speaker of the Commons. His achievements include the revival of the urgent question and a much more prominent educational role. Yet none has made so many personal enemies either, and not just because of his approach to the job.
In his Daily Mail diatribe this week, Letts compared Bercow unfavourably, to put it mildly, with the 17th-century Speaker William Lenthall. Lenthall’s finest hour came in 1642 when the autocratic Charles I came to the Commons in an attempt to arrest five MPs for treason. Lenthall went down on his knees and told the king: “May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me whose servant I am here.”
In fact, Lenthall may not have been the paragon Speaker that these oft-quoted words imply. He was attacked by critics for “a strange mixture of fearfulness and indecision”, and by his enemies for being “the grand braggadocio and liar of the age he lived in”, and it was alleged that “he mostly minded the heaping up of riches”. Bercow’s critics accuse him of many things, including braggadocio, but not in the main of being fearful, a liar or corrupt.
It’s the bias and the bombast that the critics dislike. “The deal for any Speaker is that you have a lot of powers and authority, in return for which you are absolutely impartial,” said one. “This Speaker clearly is not impartial and he shoots from the hip, as he did on Monday.”
Bercow definitely has his favourites in the Commons, whose chances of catching his eye are strong. On the Tory benches, these include Julian Lewis, Andrew Mitchell and Charles Walker, the latter of whom may want to succeed Bercow. On the opposition side, Labour’s Chris Bryant, Margaret Hodge and Keith Vaz are favourites, as is the SNP’s Alex Salmond. One of the most striking features of Bercow’s recent Speakership has been the care he has devoted to treating the SNP well.
The animus against him on the Tory benches comes from Bercow’s career journey from the far right of the party to the soft centre-left. Many see him as both a traitor to the cause and a Labour Speaker in all but name. Yet Bercow has worked hard to build good relations with some of the Conservative awkward squad, such as John Redwood, Philip Davies and Philip Hollabone. David Cameron and Michael Gove were sworn Bercow enemies, but May is not. It is striking that this week’s no confidence motion had at the time of writing only a single signatory, its mover, Duddridge.
When he was elected Speaker in 2009 – Simon Hoggart wrote in the Guardian at the time that Bercow was “dragged most willingly to perch on his new throne” – Bercow promised he would quit within a decade. His current intention is to stay on through the Brexit process, for which he thinks his experience is needed. He is working on the assumption that the last votes in the article 50 process for which MPs voted this week will take place in late 2018. That suggests a departure in two years’ time, with Walker, Bryant, Labour’s Lindsay Hoyle and perhaps even the Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg among the contenders to succeed him.
After that, Bercow would expect to go to the House of Lords, as all other recent Speakers have done. If the late Tony Benn had had his way, though, the Commons Speaker would be the head of state in a British republic. That, one suspects, would be a role Bercow would not wish to give up for anyone.
Potted profile
Born 19 January 1963
Career The son of a north London taxi driver, Bercow was a talented junior tennis player who abandoned the sport for rightwing Conservatism – early in his career he was a member of the anti-immigration Monday Club. The MP for Buckingham since 1997 has held several shadow ministerial posts.
High point Seeing off a crowded field of candidates to succeed Speaker Michael Martin, who had been obliged to step down amid the expenses scandal.
Low point Enduring lurid media coverage of the difficulties in his marriage to his wife, Sally whose relationship with Bercow’s cousin was detailed at length in some newspapers. The couple since reconciled.
What he says “After the imposition of the migrant ban … I am even more strongly opposed to an address by President Trump in Westminster Hall.”
What they say “He has overstepped the mark a number of times but this most recent incident … is wholly inappropriate.” Conservative MP James Duddridge
• This article was amended on 13 February 2017. An earlier version described David Lidington as the Conservative chief whip; he is leader of the Commons.
