A divisive Speaker’s legacy of mistrust

Unparliamentary applause broke out across the Commons yesterday and yet the Speaker failed to call those responsible to order. This was because the ovations, emanating principally, though not exclusively, from the Opposition benches, were for John Bercow who had just announced his intention to resign by Oct 31.

Voters listening in on his statement might have been surprised to hear praise being lavished upon him by all sides. After all, Mr Bercow has been, to say the least, a controversial and divisive figure during his 10 years as First Commoner of the Land.

By the time the plaudits had died away – and Mr Bercow was exceptionally generous in allowing time for their fulsome expression – the Government benches were virtually empty while Opposition MPS remained in their places. They used the opportunity to beat up Boris Johnson and his Government further for allegedly undermining parliament by suspending its sitting until Oct 14 through the device known as prorogation.

In particular, they lamented that public trust in Parliament had diminished. But whose fault is that? If Mr Bercow is to be installed in the pantheon of towering parliamentarians, as so many MPS suggested he will be, what is to be the measure of his greatness? This declining public faith in the institution has happened on his watch. People do not look to parliament today and think that there is a body that works well. They see a stymied, ossified, argumentative, disputatious and largely ineffectual organisation that has failed to carry out the democratic wishes of the public expressed in a referendum that parliament itself willed should happen. Mr Bercow is as responsible for that state of affairs as anyone.

His reputation will rest on his championing of the rights of the backbencher against those of the executive. In an extended exercise in sycophancy, MPS queued up to call him one of the great reforming Speakers. This is true only to the extent that he allowed more debate than his predecessors on matters that the Government might have preferred kept to a minimum. Michael Gove was especially laudatory on this matter even though Mr Bercow’s willingness to drag ministers from their Whitehall lairs to answer emergency questions annoyed many of them.

He believed that Parliament was the proper cockpit for such discussion, rather than the TV interview or the press conference, and perhaps on this he has a point. He also overhauled procedure, notably the system of electing the chairmen of select committees and the creation of a backbench business committee to “take back control” from the executive. Mr Bercow was elected Speaker in the aftermath of the expenses crisis which saw the resignation of Michael Martin, the first incumbent to stand down in 300 years. It was an institutional near-death experience for Parliament that Mr Bercow has endeavoured to repair.

But will history accord him the eminence this Parliament is anxious to bestow? It does not necessarily follow that allowing Parliament more opportunities to beat the executive is good for the governance of the nation. Mr Bercow has made no bones about wanting to thwart Brexit. He believes when he departs on Oct 31 that the UK will still be in the EU and he is probably right.

He spoke yesterday about how MPS were not delegates but representatives, a Burkean interpretation that means they should use their judgment in the interests of the country. But is it in their interests, or that of the wider democratic process, to seek to undermine a decision taken in a referendum? It is from the people that Parliament’s sovereignty is drawn. It does not exist as a discrete phenomenon.

Mr Bercow has been compared to Speaker William Lenthall, who stood up against the executive tyranny of Charles 1 in 1642. And this Parliament’s legacy is also a divided country and a fracturing democracy. History may look less kindly on such a record than those MPS applauding Mr Bercow.

‘A decline in public faith in the institution of Parliament has happened on Bercow’s watch’