I watched MPS suck up to Bercow. It was embarrassing then – now, it’s even worse
During his decade as Speaker of the Commons, says a report, John Bercow was a “serial bully”. Mr Bercow denies it. But if it’s true, he isn’t the only one who needs to take a look in the mirror.
An awful lot of MPS do, too. Specifically, Remainer ones.
When Mr Bercow announced his departure from the Commons in 2019, I watched MPS queue up to pay grovelling tribute to him. It was embarrassing enough at the time. But it seems even more so now. Especially when you go back and look at the kinds of things they said.
Remarkably, there wasn’t just one session of tributes to Mr Bercow. There were three. The first came on September 9 2019, after he rose from the Speaker’s chair to reveal that he was leaving. MPS – or at least, those from Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP – treated him to a standing ovation that lasted more than 30 seconds.
As it happens, applause isn’t actually allowed in the House of Commons. The Speaker would normally shut it down. But on this occasion, he graciously permitted it.
There followed an hour and 25 minutes’ worth of slavering homage. “You have been magnificent,” whinnied Labour’s Barry Sheerman. “Your leadership of this House has been exemplary,” quivered Dominic Grieve, who had recently lost the Tory whip for refusing to vote with the Government on Brexit.
That hour and 25 minutes, however, wasn’t enough to satisfy demand. Countless more MPS were desperate to join in the acclaim. On October 30, the day before Mr Bercow’s departure, PMQS featured so many tributes to him that it became the longest ever, at 71 minutes. It’s meant to last just 30.
Yet even then, MPS cried for more. And so, on October 31, the Speaker generously granted them permission to pay tribute to him for a further two hours and 50 minutes.
It was extraordinary. The man was practically swept out of his chair by a flood of adulation. I’m sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen in other lines of work. If, say, Tim from accounts quits his job, he gets a leaving card, some after-work drinks, and a brief vote of thanks from his line manager. He doesn’t get the entire office stopping work for almost three hours in the middle of the afternoon so that his colleagues can take turns to extol his historic contribution to the processing of monthly timesheets.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if MPS had kept it plain and factual; soberly thanked him for doing his best to keep order, and for encouraging the use of Urgent Questions. That would have been fair enough. But some tributes were toe-curlingly personal. They suggested that Mr Bercow wasn’t just a competent Speaker, but also a wonderful man.
“Thank you for being such a good human being,” gurgled Ann Clwyd (Lab, Cynon Valley). “You have touched the lives of hundreds of thousands,” cooed Seema Malhotra (Lab, Feltham and Heston). Richard Harrington (Con, Watford) revealed that his mother kept “a large photograph” of Mr Bercow on her mantelpiece, and would “continually” ask her son: “Why can’t you be like John Bercow?”
Admittedly these MPS did not have access to a time machine. They could not leap two-and-a-half years into the future to read this week’s report by the Independent Expert Panel, which says Mr Bercow displayed “threatening conduct” towards staff.
All the same, they were well aware that allegations of bullying had been made against him – all the way back in spring 2018. We all believe in “innocent until proven guilty”. But it doesn’t mean you have to crawl and gush. Why, then, were MPS so lavishly effusive?
In pondering this mystery, it’s worth recalling what Labour’s Dame Margaret Beckett had said in October 2018, when an interviewer asked her whether the Speaker should go. Obviously “abuse is terrible”, conceded Dame Margaret. But leaving the EU was “the most difficult decision we have made … in all our lifetimes”. And that, she argued, “trumps bad behaviour”.
As far as I can see, there’s only one way to interpret this. Which is that it was vital to keep Mr Bercow, no matter how he’d treated his staff – because it might help Remainers to foil Brexit.
Eventually, of course, Mr Bercow left, and a few months later, Brexit went ahead. But even after that, some MPS were still willing to make fools of themselves in his name. In 2020, when the Government declined to award Mr Bercow the peerage he so coveted, Labour’s Dawn Butler claimed that this itself was “a form of bullying”.
An intriguing definition of the term. As it happens, the Government has never awarded me a peerage, either. Nor has it awarded one to any of my family, or friends, or neighbours – or for that matter, millions of other people. Perhaps the Government is bullying all of us, too.
It was extraordinary. The man was practically swept out of his chair by a flood of adulation