John Bercow: Speaking for change
Over his ten years as Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow’s calls for "Order, order!", particularly during passionate Brexit debates, made him a household name—and a controversial figure. On 10 November, he spoke at the Intellectual Forum in conversation with IF Director and former MP Julian Huppert about his shift towards left-leaning politics, his time as Speaker, and the state of the current Conservative party.
John began the conversation by explaining his slightly unconventional route into Conservative party politics from a working class, Jewish background. This background made him, as he called it, "the exception and not the rule" in the party, something an early discussion he had with a fellow Conservative MP shortly after his election highlighted. The MP “said to me very early on, ‘Bercow, […] if I had my way, people like you wouldn't be in this place’. And I said to him in reply, ‘When you say people like me, do you mean because I'm lower class or because I'm Jewish?’ To which, without a moment's hesitation, he replied, ‘Both’.”
From those beginnings, John began a career that saw him become the longest-serving Speakers of the House of Commons since Edward FitzRoy held the position between 1928 and 1943. Somebody calculated, he claimed, that he said the word ‘order’ over 14,000 times during his over ten years in the position.
Though Speaker is a neutral role which requires the office holder to give up their political party, John's political career was also one which saw him gradually transition towards more left-leaning politics, so that today, despite serving as a Conservative MP, he would consider himself a Labour supporter. “I have made quite a journey over the years and I admit that it's an untypical journey”, he said. “There’s at least an anecdotal sense that people often become more conservative as they get older. That may or may not be true, but in my case, […] as I've got older I've moved leftwards”.
During the event, John was often critical of Conservative party and its recent leaders, including former Prime Ministers David Cameron and Boris Johnson and members of the current government. “The Conservative tradition is an honourable tradition in the United Kingdom, though I think the Conservative party now—I don't just mean in terms of political peril, but in terms of moral status and intellectual conviction—is in the worst state of my lifetime”, he declared. He critiqued current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who, on Friday, was facing calls to remove former Home Secretary Suella Braverman from office, as being “extremely courteous” but “not a high quality Prime Minister”.
But John also had to face criticism of his own actions over the course of the evening. When asked by Julian whether he could have done more as Speaker to prevent some of the more "shocking" behaviour, from bullying and harassment to discrimination, that takes place in Parliament, John admitted that he could have done more while also arguing that the role of Speaker is “to let the House have its say and have its way”. He addressed claims of bullying made against him by staff members as part of his answer to Julian ("It is no secret that I myself was accused of bullying staff”) and in response to a question from the audience about his statement that he disagrees with the independent review’s decision to uphold the accusations ("I'm not disregarding it. I'm simply saying, I think it suffers from the disadvantage of being wrong. And I'm entitled to that opinion, as in fairness, the panel is entitled to its opinion”).
Today, John is working on a master’s degree by research and is enjoying playing more tennis and spending more time with his family and friends than he could while serving as Speaker. When asked by an audience member what he thought the biggest challenges would be for Keir Starmer should Labour win the next election, he offered his advice from his new position outside the realm of politics. “My view, for what it's worth, is that in any leadership position, even in my relatively subordinate role as Speaker, you need to have a set of priorities. You can't try to do everything. It's better to have a limited set of reasonably ambitious but deliverable goals and stick to them like a limpet”.
After the event, John signed copies of his book, Unspeakable, staying well past the official end of the event to speak to enthusiastic audience members.
