Bullying Bercow

John Bercow is the first occupant of the Speaker’s chair in living memory not to have been ennobled. His nomination by Labour for a peerage was knocked back by the honours scrutiny committee because he remained under investigation for alleged mistreatment of staff. Nonetheless, the party was happy to welcome this one-time Conservative MP into their ranks last year.

Now they have dropped him like a hot potato after a report into his behaviour denounced him as a “serial bully” and recommended he be barred from the Palace of Westminster. Kathryn Stone, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, found that Mr Bercow had displayed “intimidating, insulting behaviour involving an abuse of power”.

An Independent Expert Panel to which he appealed upheld the findings and even said his evidence showed him to have been “a serial liar”. Mr Bercow has dismissed the process as a “kangaroo court” and there are echoes of the complaints levelled by Owen Paterson, the former Cabinet minister, when he was suspended from the House. In particular, the extent to which evidence produced by the accused person is properly considered is once again being questioned.

Whatever one thinks of Mr Bercow, and arguably his greatest offence was attempting to bend parliamentary procedure to thwart Brexit, he is entitled to a fair hearing. But one officer described working for him as “the one and only genuinely horrible, undermining and consistently upsetting period of my career”. Mr Bercow is effectively accusing her and others of lying. He will struggle to find a sympathetic ear.