Lib Dems in Bollocked by Bercow club

Embed from Getty Images

The House magazine reprints an extract from Sebastian Whale's new biography of the former Commons speaker John Bercow.

This section will be of particular interest to Liberal Democrat readers:

During the coalition years, some Lib Dems did feel that Bercow should have allowed them more opportunity to express their own independent voice when it diverged with that of the Conservatives.

“I felt there could have been more accommodation to allow that to help us increase the profile of the Lib Dems as opposed to the coalition,” says Tom Brake. 

After the 2015 election, when the Lib Dems were left with just eight MPs, some felt that Bercow was not playing fair. 

“He treated the Liberal Democrats poorly in the 2015–17 parliament,” says former Lib Dem MP Greg Mulholland. “Not because they had lost their third-party status, which we had, but by not giving the same parity and time to the leader and MPs that had been afforded to previous smaller parties.”

Lindsay Hoyle calls for John Bercow to be given peerage

Embed from Getty Images

There is something very shabby about Boris Johnson's act. His refusal to follow precedent and grant John Bercow the customary peerage given to retiring Speakers is just one more example.

So I am pleased to see that Bercow's successor Lindsay Hoyle has called for the precedent top be followed.

The Evening Standard quotes Hoyle as saying:

"My view is every speaker has been offered a peerage, so custom and practice says that's what's always happened. 

"It doesn't have to be taken but, personally, I think if that has always happened then we should continue with that. 

"I think it should be offered to him. He has served the House, he served for 10 years, he did some great things. And that's what makes the difference."

Good on Sir Lindsay. I was afraid that he would be one of those speakers who comes over as a character but is in reality a bit of a pussy cat towards the government. But maybe there is more to him than that.

For he has played down reports that he will ensure Big Ben will ring the UK out of the European Union on 31 January:

"What I'm willing to do is allow the House to make that decision. 

"But the story suddenly was, 'Lindsay Hoyle was going to bong Big Ben himself', by the sounds of it."

"Who cares for you? You're nothing but a pack of cards!"

The rodent-toothed ambition of Boris Johnson and nihilism of Dominic Cummings have laid bare the uselessness of Britain’s constitution.

In a way we should be grateful to them.

For it’s no use having a political system built on gentlemen’s agreements if the participants aren’t gentlemen.

The monarchy and the BBC have proved powerless - just ask the Queen or Andrew Neil. Only John Bercow’s courage and love of the limelight has kept the government in check these past few months and now he has gone,

"Who cares for you?" said Alice, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) "You're nothing but a pack of cards!"

It seems that all those Liberals who banged on about the need for a written constitution were right.

The choice we face is Liberalism or barbarism.

John Bercow on Crackerjack

The best news in today's BBC announcement about children's television was that The Demon Headmaster is to be remade with a super head of an academy school as the villain.

But the media was more interested in the reappearance of Crackerjack after 35 years.

I don't suppose it will match the glory days of Leslie Crowther and Peter Glaze, but at least young people will know how to respond when you say "Crackerjack".

And today's publicity has reminded me of the existence of this clip from the programme.

John Bercow and the paper-thin skins of the Brexiteers

Embed from Getty Images

The House of Commons has no trouble with the idea that an MP can, overnight, go from taking a party whip to being its impartial speaker.

So it really ought to be able to cope with John Bercow having expressed a view on Brexit after the referendum.

I have never been a Bercow fan - see the column I wrote for Liberal Democrat News when he was first elected speaker - but the meetings with young people he holds around the country to talk about parliament and its workings seem wholly admirable.

No, what the fuss in the media this weekend shows is the incredibly thin skins of the Brexiters.

They won the referendum, yet they do not seem to be enjoying it. They are constantly on the look out for slights and treason.

If Brexit is a revolution, then what I once said of Jeremy Corbyn's followers is relevant here too:

The failure of the revolution is always blamed on sabotage and the new regime takes brutal action against the supposed culprits. 

Once they have been eliminated, the people are told, all the promises of a better world that accompanied the revolution will be fulfilled

This hunt for traitors will only increase when Brexit fails to deliver the more prosperous and ordered society that its proponents seek.

The good news is that they will probably end up fighting each other. I quoted Bryan Magee in the same post:

There is a situational logic to revolutions. Disparate groups unite to overthrow an existing regime, but once they have succeeded in doing so the cause that brought them together has gone, and they then fight one another to fill the power vacuum that they themselves have created. 

These internecine struggles, usually savage, among erstwhile allies perpetuate the revolutionary breakdown of society far beyond the overthrow of the old regime, and delay the establishment of a new order.

Tim Farron backs John Bercow over Donald Trump

The leader of the Liberal Democrats was interviewed on BBC1's News at Six this evening.

He was right to support John Bercow.

Keith Vaz eyes the speaker's chair

View image | gettyimages.com

"Keith Vaz has two ambitions. He is hoping that he will get a knighthood, and he would like to be the next speaker. 

"You can tell this by the way he is slavishly applauding the new Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, at Parliamentary Labour party meetings. He also seems to be tempering his criticism of the Tories."

So says an unnamed Labour MP in a new story on Exaro.

A similarly unnamed Conservative MP adds there:

"There is no question that Keith Vaz fancies the job of speaker as he is very ambitious. He is very well connected and very friendly with the current speaker."

The idea of Vaz as speaker comes straight from a Trollope novel, but this is not the first time it has been floated.

In December 2013 the Telegraph told us:

Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Home Affairs select committee, has emerged as a surprise contender to be the next Speaker of the House of Commons. MPs confirmed that the Labour MP's name has been doing the rounds as a possible replacement for John Bercow, who is due to stand down in the middle of the next Parliament.

We can only pray for the preservation of Lindsay Hoyle.

But be warned. The Commons can do strange things when it comes to choosing a speaker,

In 2000 the two front benches wanted Sir George Young to succeed Betty Boothroyd, but the swollen ranks of Labour backbenchers decided that a Labour house required a Labour speaker.

So Michael Martin was hoisted into the chair and sat there, red faced and scowling, until the expenses scandal meant his inadequacies could no longer be tolerated.

The problem with John Bercow

#88495982 / gettyimages.com

Back in March 2010, when John Bercow had been in the Speaker's chair for less than a year, I wrote in Liberal Democrat News:

With his gown and boyish smile, John Bercow resembles a progressive young master in an old-fashioned school. And like a lot of masters who want to be popular with their pupils, he has trouble keeping order. 

You can trace his problems back to the undistinguished reign of Michael Martin. Often Buggins’ turn will get you through, but when the expenses storm broke over Westminster Martin proved to have none of the qualities needed to restore its standing in the eyes of the public. 

Trouble was, there was no way of getting rid him other than public ridicule. And in that process the authority, the mystique, of the Speakership took a battering too. 

Then there was the way Bercow got the job. When the election of the new Speaker took place David Cameron was riding high in the polls and many Labour MPs assumed they would soon lose their seats. What better way of getting back at an incoming Conservative House, those Labour MPs reasoned, than landing it with someone it would detest? 

And Bercow, though he started out as secretary of the Monday Club's immigration and repatriation committee, had been long been courting Labour backbenchers with an eye to the Speakership. He did it so blatantly that he became widely disliked on his own side. 

So we again have a Speaker who is not respected by many MPs, which has done nothing to rebuild the standing of the role.

Michael Martin had been elected as Speaker when the bookies' favourite had been Sir George Young, largely because Labour backbenchers believed a House dominated by their party should have a Labour speaker.

As I pointed out in another Lib Dem News column:

There is, incidentally, another reason why Sir George Young lost, and it tells you a lot about Labour backbenchers. They could forgive Bercow for being the former secretary of the Monday club's immigration and repatriation committee, but they could not forgive Young for being an Old Etonian.

To return to the first column, I was right to say he reminds you of a schoolmaster. But what he really reminds me of is the sort of teacher you find immensely impressive when you are 17, but are disappointed by if you meet them in later life. (It was David Grace who made this observation about teachers to me.)

That is the real problem with John Bercow, though many liberals will support his attempts to modernise the Commons. He comes across as a permanent undergraduate.

How I forecast the rise of UKIP in 2009

Anyone who wrote a piece in 2010 forecasting the rise of UKIP should probably tweet it now.
— George Eaton (@georgeeaton) May 2, 2013

So the editor of the New Statesman's Staggers blog tweeted this morning.

I can do one better than that: I forecast the rise of UKIP in 2009.

After noting that leading Conservative bloggers were queueing to express their support for Nigel Farage, who had just announced he was standing against John Bercow in Buckingham, I wrote:

All of which reminds us what a hard job David Cameron continues to have in keeping his party in the political mainstream. The headbangers and beggar-kickers are constantly threatening to escape from the wicker hamper into which he has crammed them. He is sitting on it heavily, but they are not going to stop pushing. 

If Cameron does win the next election it is easy to imagine defections to UKIP - at least in the blogosphere - once he begins to make the compromises that become inevitable in power. 

UKIP could also emerge as a threat to the Tories in Westminster by-elections. 

You heard it here first.

Big Ben to fall silent: The Bercows explain

Curbing Westminster's drinking culture

The Commons Commission is making moves to curb the drinking culture at Westminster following Eric Joyce's conviction (and lenient sentencing) for punching and headbutting other MPs and their guests in Strangers' Bar.

According to the Independent:

Commons staff are being ordered to top up MPs' glasses less frequently amid concerns over the drinking culture at Westminster. 

They will also receive training on how to refuse to serve drunken customers, and opening hours of bars on the estate could also be curtailed.

James Kirkup has the new policy in full. The Commons Commission is chaired by the Speaker, John Bercow.

An alternative explanation for that evening's unfortunate events is suggested by Eric Joyce's old French teacher, George McMillan, as quoted in the Daily Record:

Shamed MP Eric Joyce turned into a drunken brawler because he didn’t get belted at school, his old teacher claimed yesterday. 

Retired George McMillan said Joyce, 51, who boasted he got a 'buzz' from fighting, escaped corporal punishment from teachers because his mum forbade it. 

The former French master said: “The anti-corporal punishment lobby always used as their main argument that violence begets violence. In Eric’s case … the opposite is the case."

The shorter John Bercow

Abolish party conferences so everyone can look at me on television instead.

Simon Burns and the seven thousand dwarfs

Yesterday Simon Burns, Minister of State at the Department of Health, was heard to mutter "stupid, sanctimonious dwarf" after the Speaker, John Bercow, asked him to respect the Commons' rules of debate.

In fact, to judge by Simon Hoggart and his Guardian sketch, Burns did rather more than mutter:

He started talking, and not to himself. We heard the words "stupid" and "dwarf", more than once. Some of my colleagues claim to have detected the word "sanctimonious" in there somewhere as well.

At one point he held his hand out, at what I can only conclude would be the height of a dwarf. He went on rattling, like an ancient car whose engine continues to run even after the ignition has been cut off.

An Ulster MP tried in vain to ask a question. Later Ian Paisley Jr, a man who should have been inured from childhood to the sound of volcanic rage, later complained that it was out of order for someone to "berate, scoff, scold and hiss at the Chair while another member is trying to ask a question".

This incident interested me because, back in March, I suggested in a House Points column that:

the Tory benches’ increasingly open disrespect for Bercow tells us something important about modern Conservatives. They are simply ungovernable.

Philosophically, their views owe little to what the philosopher John Gray called the “rich network of interlocking interests, social deferences and inherited institutions” that have historically constituted British Conservatism. Instead they offer a bundle of theory and grievances, much of it market nihilist rather than Conservative and originating across the Atlantic.

And personally, unlike their predecessors, this new generation of Conservatives have not been shown their place in the scheme of things by Spartan schools and regimental sergeant majors.

Instead, they have entered adult life with a cast-iron sense of entitlement and a certainty that no one, certainly not the Commons Speaker, can tell them what to do.

The fact that a minister behaved as Burns did suggests to me that I was on to something.

Burns' apology today also tells us something about modern Britain.

He did not apologise, as he should have done, to Bercow and to the House for his rude behaviour. Instead he apologised "If I have caused any offence to any group of people" after a complaint from a pressure group for sufferers of rare forms of dwarfism.

This bogus "if you were offended" apology will be familiar to anyone who has complained to a modern corporation.

Still, having involved themselves in the case, John Connerty and his Walking with Giants group, should finish things. From now on, whenever Burns tries to hold a surgery or public meeting the building should be besieged by hordes of angry dwarfs, vertically challenged people or whatever the polite term is.

Once he has been driven out of public life he can be replaced as health minister by someone capable of behaving like an adult in the House.

John Bercow set to defeat the parliamentary mujahideen

Writing on the Guardian website (and in tomorrow's paper), Patrick Wintour predicts that John Bercow will be re-elected as speaker of the Commons tomorrow "despite the opposition of a small group of Conservative diehards led by Nadine Dorries who are trying to depose him".

Wintour says that Bercow has the support of David Cameron, Nick Clegg and the acting Labour leader Harriet Harman, and that he will "play a key role in trying to adapt parliament to the reality that the Liberal Democrats have joined the government, so leaving parliament with

only one large formal opposition party".

He adds:

One source said that if 20 or 30 MPs did vote against Bercow, more than most people predict, the outcome "will be cathartic, forcing a small parliamentary mujahideen to recognise finally that Bercow is legitimate figure".

Liberal England: Ungovernable Conservatives

Today's House Points column from Liberal Democrat News appears to argue that the trouble with the Conservatives is that they are no longer Conservative. I suppose that is what comes of turning 50.

If the Conservative benches are ungovernable now they will be worse after the general election, given the intake of new members. And it is certainly true of the Conservative blogosphere.

The action of Labour members in making John Bercow Speaker leads me to pose Calder's Third Law of Politics. It is:

When politicians do something which they think is very clever, it will eventually turn out to have been very stupid.

My first two Laws, developed over many years writing this column are:

1. If all parties are united in support of a measure, it will turn out to be a disaster.
2. The more power the state takes to itself, the more arbitrarily that power will be exercised.

To the column...

Order-less

With his gown and boyish smile, John Bercow resembles a progressive young master in an old-fashioned school. And like a lot of masters who want to be popular with their pupils, he has trouble keeping order.

You can trace his problems back to the undistinguished reign of Michael Martin. Often Buggins’ turn will get you through, but when the expenses storm broke over Westminster Martin proved to have none of the qualities needed to restore its standing in the eyes of the public.

Trouble was, there was no way of getting rid him other than public ridicule. And in that process the authority, the mystique, of the Speakership took a battering too.

Then there was the way Bercow got the job. When the election of the new Speaker took place David Cameron was riding high in the polls and many Labour MPs assumed they would soon lose their seats. What better way of getting back at an incoming Conservative House, those Labour MPs reasoned, than landing it with someone it would detest?

And Bercow, though he started out as secretary of the Monday Club's immigration and repatriation committee, had been long been courting Labour backbenchers with an eye to the Speakership. He did it so blatantly that he became widely disliked on his own side.

So we again have a Speaker who is not respected by many MPs, which has done nothing to rebuild the standing of the role.

But the Tory benches’ increasingly open disrespect for Bercow also tells us something important about modern Conservatives. They are simply ungovernable.

Philosophically, their views owe little to what the philosopher John Gray called the “rich network of interlocking interests, social deferences and inherited institutions” that have historically constituted British Conservatism. Instead they offer a bundle of theory and grievances, much of it market nihilist rather than Conservative and originating across the Atlantic.

And personally, unlike their predecessors, this new generation of Conservatives have not been shown their place in the scheme of things by Spartan schools and regimental sergeant majors.

Instead, they have entered adult life with a cast-iron sense of entitlement and a certainty that no one, certainly not the Commons Speaker, can tell them what to do.

I blame progressive schoolmasters – like John Bercow.

Jackie Ballard's new job

Jackie Ballard is one of the candidates to join the board of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, set up after the expenses scandal. Her name was among those announced by John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, on Tuesday. She will have to be approved by MPs.

As the BBC website reminds us, Jackie:

was Liberal Democrat MP for Taunton from 1997 to 2001 and has served as director general of the RSPCA. She is currently chief executive of the Royal National Institute for the Deaf.

Conservative bloggers cheer Nigel Farage on against Bercow

Nigel Farage's announcement that he is to stand against John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, in his Buckingham constituency at the next election has excited the Conservative blogosphere.

"Yes He Can!" crows Tory Bear, complete with Obamaesque graphic.

"Go Nigel Go" cries Dizzy Thinks.

And Iain Dale says: "I'm glad I don't live in Buckingham." (I take this an admission that he would find it hard to maintain party loyalty if he lived in the constituency, rather than as a general assault on the this blameless Home Counties town.)

As well as being a champion blogger, remember, Iain was a Tory PPC in what they thought was a winnable seat at the last general election.

(Later. You can add Tim Montgomerie at Conservative Home: "I'd be tempted to vote UKIP if I lived in Buckingham.")

All of which reminds us what a hard job David Cameron continues to have in keeping his party in the political mainstream. The headbangers and beggar-kickers are constantly threatening to escape from the wicker hamper into which he has crammed them. He is sitting on it heavily, but they are not going to stop pushing.

If Cameron does win the next election it is easy to imagine defections to UKIP - at least in the blogosphere - once he begins to make the compromises that become inevitable in power.

UKIP could also emerge as a threat to the Tories in Westminster by-elections.

You heard it here first.

With thanks to Oberon Houston and Soho Politico.

House Points: The Olympics, school choirs and Samuel Danks Waddy

Today's House Points arguable finds me a little demob happy. This is my last column of the parliamentary season.

Incidentally, when I was at primary school in Hemel Hempstead we sang for no one more eminent than Potten End Women's Institute. We got a good tea, though.

Bercow's big tent

Bad news from Olympic questions on Monday: Tessa Jowell is talking about “investment” again. And we all know what that means under Labour.

This time the government is making good the shortfall in private sector contributions to the media centre and athletes’ village. It all comes out of the contingency fund, apparently, so it doesn’t really count.

Still, if anyone can make a mess of selling property in London – assuming it will be possible to sell houses again by the time the Games have taken place – it is national government.

A clue to the mind-set of those putting on the Olympics came in a Spectator diary written a few weeks ago by Roger Mosey, the man in charge of the BBC’s preparations. He blithely wrote: “£9bn is a lot of money, but the government is offering £220bn of gilts to cover our debt in this financial year alone.”

So spending £220bn on bailing out the banks means we need worry less about the cost of the Olympics? If they gave medals for bending logic....

******

John Bercow passed one early test. As part of the campaign against water companies’ higher charges on community groups for surface water drainage, some brave soul decided to bring 100 cub scouts to Westminster. But the Commons authorities said no because cubs are too young to vote. Bercow lifted this ban and allowed them to meet in Westminster Hall.

On Monday we learned of a new challenge. For the past four years school choirs from Hemel Hempstead have entertained MPs, and staff over lunch in the run-up to Christmas. In future, says the local MP, this will be banned as it inconveniences people.

Youth groups in Hemel are having a bad run. Last Christmas a shopping centre banned Brownies from carol singing because they are a “fire hazard”. Yet I know of no evidence they are any more flammable than the rest of us.

Mr Speaker should overturn this ban too.

******

This has been a depressing political season, but Liberal history always cheers me up. In recent days I have become interested in a gentleman who was MP for Barnstaple 1874-9, for Sheffield 1879-80 and for Edinburgh 1882-5.

The reason he makes me so cheerful?

It’s his name: Samuel Danks Waddy.

The election of John Bercow as Speaker

My House Points column from today's Liberal Democrat News. What is really wrong about electing Bercow as Speaker, of course, is that he is younger than I am.

Traduced Tory

Spare a thought for Sir George Young. He has now lost the Speakership twice for partisan reasons. Nine years ago he failed to win because government backbenchers were determined that a Labour House should have a Labour speaker. Now he has lost to John Bercow because those same Labour MPs anticipate a Tory landslide and want a Speaker who will be thorn in David Cameron’s side.

But then many Liberal Democrat MPs voted for Bercow too. They believe he will prove a reformer.

They would be wrong to place too much emphasis on the fact that Bercow is a relatively youthful Speaker. It’s not so long since we had a young family man at 10 Downing Street – and look how he ended up.

Nor should they be too excited by his decision to dispense with most of the Speaker’s traditional dress. The flummery at Westminster can be irritating, but it’s hardly the most serious problem the British political system faces.

Bercow is saying the right things. He has talked of “an agenda for reform, for renewal, for revitalisation and for the reassertion of the core values of this great institution in the context of the 21st century".

Even so, you fear his recipe for reconnecting parliament with the public involves one J. Bercow appearing on television with great regularity.

What the he must do is help the Commons begin the process of reining in the executive. In particular, the timetabling of business must be taken out of the hands of the government and put in the hands of a committee of the House. At present too many laws goes through without being debated at all.

And if that means less legislation, that would be no bad thing.

How much power the Speaker has to do this remains to be seen. Bercow may have an uphill task to convince those who see his political odyssey from the far right of the Tories to the shores of New Labour as pure opportunism.

There is, incidentally, another reason why Sir George Young lost, and it tells you a lot about Labour backbenchers. They could forgive Bercow for being the former secretary of the Monday club's immigration and repatriation committee, but they could not forgive Young for being an Old Etonian.

Richard Shepherd should be the new Speaker

So who should be the new Speaker?

When Michael Martin became won the last contest, his election broke the unofficial compact that the Commons would alternate between Labour and Tory Speakers. The Labour front bench was happy to support Sir George Young, but there was a strong feeling on the back benches that a Labour House should have a Labour Speaker.

Three Labour Speakers in a row would be too much. That is not quite the same things as saying that it the Tories turn. I think Alan Beith would do a good job; certainly, he has the right ideas about reforming the Commons. But I cannot see him winning anything like enough support from the other parties.

If it does have to be a Tory, I know whom I am backing. John Bercow, in his eagerness to win the role, reminds me of no one so much as Michael Martin. That is not a good precedent. I also fear that he would interpret reconnecting the public with the Commons as meaning he should be on television all the time.

Anne Widdecombe would be better, but not a lot better. I sometimes wonder if she exists at all if there is not a journalist or camera in the room. And if she won we would have to go through the whole thing again after the next election.

The person I would back for Speaker is Richard Shepherd. He has an unimpeachable record on civil liberties and would be an instinctive supporter of backbenchers against the executive. He sometimes gives the impression of feeling things too deeply to be entirely coherent, but he would be my choice.