Speaker hopeful calls Bercow a ‘verbal bully’

Position in the Commons has been tarnished by ‘biasness’ of outgoing MP, says Shailesh Vara

JOHN BERCOW has been branded a “playground bully” who has “tarnished the role of Speaker” by one of the candidates vying to succeed him. Shailesh Vara, the Conservative MP for North West Cambridgeshire and former party vice-chairman, tore into the outgoing Speaker during a hustings event held in Parliament yesterday.

Joining Mr Vara in criticism was Tory veteran Sir Edward Leigh, who said Mr Bercow was “perceived by a large part of the nation not to be impartial”.

The outgoing Speaker launched a defence of his record in an interview on US television, claiming Brexit supporters were blaming the referee for them “losing the match” after a series of Government defeats in the Commons.

At a special hustings convened for Westminster journalists, the nine MPS hoping to become the next Speaker were asked if they believed Mr Bercow had damaged the role.

Mr Vara said: “Speaker Bercow has not been impartial and frankly speaking, I think he’s tarnished the role of the speaker with his biasness. I think what is required is that we need to rewrite the rule book and make it absolutely clear what the Speaker can and cannot do in difficult circumstances. That is actually to protect the Speaker as much as protecting Parliament.”

He added: “Recently we’ve had a lot of debate about the standards of MPS in the Commons. Given that Speaker Bercow has at times behaved like a verbal playground bully in the way he treats his colleagues, he insults them, demeans them. I hope he loses all authority to lecture MPS as to how they should behave when his own behaviour is in question. I think the Speaker should be courteous, polite, authoritative, yes, but not demeaning to his colleagues.”

Mr Bercow dismissed claims of bias from hardline Brexiteer MPS on CNN. “If you are losing the match it’s quite bad form to blame the referee,” he said, although he admitted he had “made mistakes” as Speaker, which he said was “almost unavoidable”.

But he answered a claim that “particular rulings may have been more helpful to the Opposition than to the Government”, explaining he made such rulings to “help the scrutiny of the people who wield the levers of power”.

He said: “I’m an enabler of all colleagues across the House who want to express their different points of view.”

Mr Bercow, who is due to step down on Oct 31, described the bitter debates on Brexit as among the worst he had seen in his 22 years as an MP for Buckingham, and said some of the abuse directed at Parliament and MPS had been “low-grade and vulgar to the extreme”.

Reflecting on his time as Speaker, he said he was “entirely unmoved by some of the more downmarket attacks on Parliament that have been launched in recent times”. “They are unworthy, they don’t amount to a row of beans and I’m not intimidated by them.”

Mr Bercow added that the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act was “the most logical consequence if a deal isn’t agreed”.