Dominic Lawson

FOR the most compelling summary of the political war in Westminster, turn to a real live soldier. I refer to Lieutenant General David Leakey, who, for many years, was ‘Black Rod’ — technically the Queen’s representative in Parliament.

On the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show yesterday, he was blunt: ‘Boris Johnson will meet his match in Speaker Bercow.’

Lieutenant General Leakey knows what he is talking about. Last year, he revealed how, in his interactions with parliamentary officials, the Speaker was ‘vindictive’, ‘intimidating’ and ‘bullying’ — concluding that Bercow didn’t ‘match up to the standards expected’ of a public servant.

He was not then talking about the legislative fight over Brexit, in which the Government has sought to carry out the verdict of 17.4 million voters in the 2016 referendum, while Parliament collectively — with the indispensable assistance of Bercow — has obstructed it. But his words give the most authoritative possible account of the Speaker’s confrontational style in pursuit of his objectives.

Outrage

We got a glimpse of that last week after the Government declared it would be proroguing Parliament ahead of a Queen’s Speech in October.

Although Labour had earlier been calling for precisely this, pointing out that the current session of Parliament was the longest since 1945, Johnson timed it in such a way as to reduce the legislative time available for MPs to block his plans to take the UK out of the EU on October 31, ‘deal or no deal’.

Remarkably, Bercow immediately issued a statement from the Mediterranean resort where he was on holiday, declaring that Johnson’s action ‘ represents a constitutional outrage’.

Yet, as the Leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, retorted the following morning: ‘The convention is that the Commons Speaker has no tongue with which to speak or eyes with which to see other than is directed by the House.

‘ What he said yesterday was not directed by the House and therefore must be said in a personal capacity and not as Mr Speaker. It was the most constitutionally improper thing that happened yesterday.’

While Boris Johnson is certainly the sort of person prepared to break with conventional conduct in getting what he wants, Bercow has already shown himself willing to defy parliamentary convention when it suits his objectives.

In January, he sent the Tory benches into near apoplexy when, rejecting the advice of the House of Commons’ clerks, he allowed amendments on a so- called ‘business motion’ that allowed opponents of the Government’s Brexit plans to seize control of parliamentary procedure in a way that had never happened before.

Justifying his decision, Bercow remarked: ‘If we were guided only by precedent, manifestly nothing in our procedures would ever change.’

Up against a Speaker so willing to tear up convention, it is not surprising that Johnson has been prepared himself to push the parliamentary envelope.

It is clear to the PM that Bercow, and not the ineffectual leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, is the man presenting the biggest challenge in Westminster to his determination to take the UK out of the EU on October 31.

Bercow insists he is merely seeking to give voice to Parliament and not acting in a partial or political fashion. I would like to believe that: if it were any other Speaker within my lifetime, I would do so.

All of them, once in that seat, appeared studiously neutral — like the umpire’s chair in Bercow’s sporting passion, tennis — on the vexed political matters of the day. But Brexit is now that most vexed matter — and Bercow has abjectly failed to keep his own views on it secret.

In a recent interview with the veteran political reporter Phil Webster, Bercow defended himself against the charge that he had expressed opinions improperly: ‘ The Speaker is, and should be, independent . . . I once revealed [when speaking] at Reading University I had voted in the referendum. I am a private citizen. I have a right to vote.’

Danger

But Bercow did not merely tell Reading’s students that he had cast a vote in the 2016 referendum, he told them

how he had voted: Remain. He told them he supported ‘ freedom of movement’ (the EU regulation that will fall from our statute book when — if — Brexit happens). And he attacked ‘untruths’ told by the Leave campaign.

It is absolutely OK for Bercow to hold those opinions. It is absolutely not OK for him to express them publicly while he is Speaker. The rules laid down by Erskine May, the parliamentary procedural ‘bible’, declare that ‘The Speaker must remain separate from political issues . . . even in retirement’.

That, one would have thought, should also have deterred Bercow from driving around in a car (his wife’s) with a sticker declaring ‘B******s to Brexit’ — but he did so. As the former Labour MP and deputy speaker Natascha Engel said yesterday: ‘When it comes to Brexit, he has never made a secret of his views or willingness to enter the political fray.’ The point here is not whether Bercow is capable of detaching his personal hostility to Brexit from his actions as Speaker — it is that, by failing to disguise his opinions, he has created the impression that he is a biased umpire on Westminster’s Centre Court. That drains the moral authority essential to such a role.

It is bad enough that the Brexit-voting public increasingly sees the Commons as wilfully refusing to honour the biggest popular ballot in our nation’s history. It adds to that danger of bringing our democratic system into disrepute if they think the Westminster ‘game’ has a dodgy umpire, to boot.

By rights, Bercow should no longer be in that chair anyway. When he stood for office in 2009, he pledged to MPs: ‘If you do me the honour of electing me, I will serve for no more than nine years.’

He welched on that by not standing down in the summer of 2018 — even though he had been condemned in an independent report by Dame Laura Cox for presiding over a culture of bullying.

Yet, although Labour MPs would normally stick up for staff who have been so treated, and have no truck with a male boss who ran his office in such a way, they made an exception for Bercow. It seemed to rest on his Brexit credentials.

Discourtesy

Thus, when Dame Margaret Beckett was asked by the BBC whether, in terms of supporting Bercow, ‘Brexit trumps allegations of abuse’, the former Labour foreign secretary replied: ‘Abuse is terrible, it should be stopped . . . but yes, if it comes to it, the constitutional future of this country, yes, it trumps bad behaviour.’

Labour MPs such as Beckett are right to see Bercow as their man, and he amply justified their faith when — without even consulting his equivalent in the Upper House, Lord Fowler — he declared he would block President Trump from addressing both Houses of Parliament.

He also refused to attend the state banquet for the U.S. President.

I imagine Her Majesty faced this discourtesy with equanimity. But, make no mistake, if Bercow seeks to defy Johnson’s prorogation, he will be challenging the Queen and not just the PM (she was constitutionally obliged to assent to the advice from her First Minister).

Bercow is now, so we are told, searching for ways to make sure that an emergency motion in Parliament next week could, in defiance of all precedent and the advice of Commons clerks, be turned into a law mandating the Government to delay or block Brexit.

The Times reported what it called a ‘source close to the Speaker’ saying: ‘He could go on a suicide mission. But he is on a collision course, not only with the Government, but with the Queen and the clerks of the House.’

If anyone is prepared to create a constitutional crisis over Brexit, it is not Boris Johnson, but John Bercow. I only hope Lieutenant General Leakey is wrong about the likely winner of this battle.