Bercow .. sometime right; always insufferable

I enjoyed this (from an unmentionable source for those who find these things hard to cope with ...)

It is pretty unedifying, in the midst of a national crisis, to watch the runners and riders for the Tory leadership parade themselves over Theresa’s May’s political corpse. But it is nothing compared with the unappealing spectacle of John Bercow preening himself before the world’s media as Parliament goes into meltdown.
Yesterday, while UK newspaper-readers woke up to photographs of a slightly haggard Mrs May on the front pages, readers of Die Welt in Germany and La Repubblica in Italy were treated to a grinning Bercow, posing in his sumptuous offices in the Commons.
An interview was run into both papers – and I wouldn’t be surprised, given its tone, if it pops up in the next edition of Hello! magazine as well.
Bercow, it told readers, was known for his ‘captivating English’. It then gave him a free run to deny that he had shown bias towards Remain during the Brexit process.
“If I am biased I am biased in favour of Parliament,” he said – a nonsensical reply, a bit like a judge, having directed a jury to find his golfing partner not guilty, saying he was biased only in favour of the courtroom.
It would have been enlightening for readers to be shown, as well as the inside of Mr Bercow’s flat, his Range Rover with its sticker declaring: “Bollocks to Brexit – it’s not a done deal”.
It certainly isn’t a done deal with Bercow in the speaker’s chair.
He wields enormous power by virtue of being able to decide – pretty much on a whim – which motions get put before the house and which are not. Last week, citing a 17th century rule, he announced that he would block the government from bringing a third vote on Mrs May’s deal unless it is substantially changed.
Fair enough, if that is the convention, yet Bercow doesn’t appear interested in applying the same rule to votes for a second referendum. We have already had two of them – both defeated – and Bercow has indicated that he may well allow some of yesterday’s defeated indicative motions to be brought back to the Commons on Monday.
Bercow doesn’t care an awful lot about consistency, but he does seem to care quite a bit about his own celebrity. The Die Welt/ Repubblica interview is just the latest in a series of media features which have brought him a kind of international stardom. In January, he appeared on CNN where he declared himself – unchallenged – to be the champion of “minority and dissident voices”.
He knows full well how the world’s media sees him - as a bit of light relief as British MPs fight themselves over Brexit – and has played the part for all it is worth. The longer the Brexit saga goes on, the more he has played to the international gallery. He has turned important debates into episodes of the John Bercow show, losing no opportunity to put-down MPs in an exaggerated, schoolmasterly fashion.
He knows, too, that the likes of Die Welt have a pretty superficial interest in his character and role, and are not going to raise difficult subjects such as his alleged bullying of colleagues, nor his history of far-right politics as a senior member of the Monday Club which advocated repatriation of ethnic minority immigrants in the 70s and 80s.

Nor, for that matter, his extravagance. Bercow owes his position to the expenses scandal, which brought down his predecessor, Michael Martin. Yet that did not stop him immediately ordering £20,000 worth of home improvements to his grace and favour apartment – in spite of it having just had £700,000 worth of renovations. It included £7,500 on sofas and cushions.
In 2013 he went on to bill taxpayers £560 for lightbulbs – bought for heritage lamps. He has submitted a bill for £2,400 for cleaning his curtains, and last year spent £1,385 installing a new shower. It would have been nice for German and Italian readers to be allowed to sneak a look at what UK taxpayers have paid for.
Bercow knows that like Theresa May, his Commons career is drawing to a close. He has never been popular and won’t survive another election. Like Tony Blair in his last months in office, he seems already to have one eye on a subsequent career – in his case in some kind of entertainment. If I were him, I would keep plugging away at those German audiences, who will lap up anything they see as English eccentricity.
On German television every new year they show a short film, Dinner for One, an old music hall routine featuring a butler who has to impersonate his employer’s dead friends.
It is decades since it would have raised a laugh in Britain, yet German viewers seem able to watch it innumerable times and still titter away.
That is where John Bercow should look for employment when, not before time, he is finally hauled out of the speaker’s chair.

Posted By: paulg on March 28th 2019 at 15:28:08

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