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.”
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