Ex-deputy takes her revenge on the ‘Squeaker’

When the next list of working peers is announced, one name will be conspicuously absent. Sensationally, John Bercow is the first Speaker in 230 years not to be draped in ermine after vacating the Commons chair.

he has faced a raft of allegations about bullying members of his staff — all of which he loudly denies — while also earning Boris Johnson’s wrath after his outrageous tinkering with Commons procedures in a failed attempt to block Brexit.

now natascha engel, who laboured for two years as his deputy, appears to have endorsed him being blocked for a peerage.

In a devastating critique of the pint-sized ‘Squeaker’ in The Critic magazine, she describes Bercow’s ‘systematic accrual of untrammelled political power’, alleging that ‘in the name of advancing parliamentary democracy [he] came close to ending it’.

engel, a former Labour MP, adds: ‘The pity was that all the power he gathered to himself was invariably for one thing — to settle old scores . . . every quip and nasty comment was aimed at people he felt had snubbed him during his long political career or people he felt had not recognised his abilities the way they ought.

‘even though he achieved great office, he used his powers to punish those he disliked.’

She adds: ‘Accumulating evergreater powers came to a great flowering at the time of the Brexit debates. It was what brought him down.

‘It’s a shame that a man with so many talents was undone by his appetite for vengeance.’

I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief that this deeply unpleasant little man has been denied the peerage he so greedily craved.