Farewell Bercow, partisan wrecker of tradition

The outgoing Commons Speaker has destroyed the institution of Parliament as a representative body

John Bercow resigned from the Speakership the way he ran it: with partisanship, sentimentality and a billion words when one would do. His language is impenetrable; faux-clever. He sounds like Jane Austen giving directions to a foreign tourist.

He is also a classic example of a liberal wrecker, as opposed to a radical revolutionary. I like radicals because they’re honest and pure. They try to conquer the institution from the outside; scale its walls, pull it down. A liberal wrecker embeds himself in the heart of the institution; he pretends to be in sympathy with it, takes power and then slowly dismantles it, piece by piece. Usually in the name of saving it from itself.

The wrecker is a snob and a narcissist. He wants all the respectability and authority that comes from the institution and its history, but he also wants to remake it in his own image – so that future generations will see not the tradition,

but the lingering impression of his own ideals. What he doesn’t realise is that age and continuity are the great ballasts to institutions; the moment he pulls them down, the institution collapses around his head.

We’ve seen countless things go this way in the past century: schools ruined by progressive headmasters; churches by trendy bishops. But the Commons held out so long because most MPS thought they had a stake in its established way of doing business. It’s resisted clapping, for example, because anyone with a brain can see it’s disruptive. A 1998 select committee report on modernisation pointed out that applause can easily be orchestrated and abused – “with the success or failure of a speech being judged not by its content but by the relative length of ovation at the end”.

Since the rise of social media, there’s been a notable increase in teary-eyed speeches much like the one Mr Bercow gave yesterday (for what felt like six hours). Parliament has become the national forum for getting things off your chest. Give MPS the chance to applaud and business will come to a standstill as the House descends into a theatre of partisan cheese.

That was clear when, at the end of Mr Bercow’s three-act opera, Labour MPS stood up and clapped and Tories did not; an image that encapsulated the Speakership’s loss of cross-party respect. Whether Mr Bercow has been quantifiably partisan or not is by the by; he is perceived as such and this has eroded the authority of his office.

He said that his goal has only been to increase the authority of Parliament, something we all thought was needed in the aftermath of the Iraq War. Oversight of the executive is plainly a good thing. But under Mr Bercow, the Commons has gone further.

The problem is that into the postiraq mix was thrown the referendum on the EU, which offered a competitive source of democratic authority to MPS. Brexiteers, like me, believe the referendum takes precedence; Remainers, like Mr Bercow, think the Commons comes first. The Government was elected to deliver on the result of the referendum, yet Parliament – most recently by taking control of the order paper to rule out no deal – has thwarted the executive.

MPS are now calling the shots on foreign policy, which is unheard of. Remainers argue that this, surely, is what the referendum result asked for: to give more power to Parliament. Historians such as Robert Tombs and David Starkey have pointed out that, actually, Parliament is only one part of British government, and when it has proven obstructive in times past, it has been ignored. People vote for parties with manifestos to form a government. Mr Bercow’s rewriting of tradition has been designed to rebalance things so that if MPS disagree with that manifesto, they have the mechanisms necessary to overturn it.

Ends and motivations are all wrapped up together. Remainers love Mr Bercow and what he’s done because he happens to be on their side, and thus they tumble like lemmings into the trap that corrodes all traditional institutions. If you support reform because you happen to approve of the aims, you must brace yourself for the future moment when that reform is used against you.

Liberal Remainers have enjoyed having a partisan, Left-wing, pro-eu speaker, but what happens if at some point an absolute gammon is elected to the chair? A hang ’em, flog ’ em kind of chap who doesn’t only want to leave the EU but go to war with it? Then you might just miss the principle of non-partisanship in the Speaker – because, by siding with no one, it works as the ally of all.

Sadly the very notion of objectivity is alien to modern liberalism, which narrows opinions and choices down to a liberal singularity. The actions of the Commons in the last few years have essentially been about stopping Brexit; one suspects Mr Bercow has only empowered Parliament in order to advance the liberal agenda. It is no coincidence that the age that supposedly saw the elevation of MPS has also seen them at loggerheads with their own constituents. The idea of the institution as a representative body, there to enact the people’s wishes, has been wrecked from within.