Bercow: an average speaker for an average House

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

I am sceptical of the election of John Bercow as Speaker.

I find it hard to believe that he has has been elected on anything other than politics. Whether it’s a partisan politics or not is irrelevant: this will appear the result of manoeuvering; the politics of the contrary.

While MPs themselves have been second guessing votes – trying to mitigate some personal-political effect by electing a candidate seen as unharmed by the expenses scandal – I remain a member of the pubic that is distrustful of our parliament’s ability to change for the better and I am uncertain of the new speaker’s ability to help shape that progess.

Why?

Most pertinently, John Bercow is a polarising figure. In his opening gambit, he says that MPs feel “very sore and very vulnerable” as a result of the expenses revelations. This does not represent the hurt and the anger – and the ultimate distrust – of anyone I know.

After the expenses scandal, we needed a unifiying speaker. What we have got is the best of a bad bunch.

What we needed next was someone to bring parliament together, a cross-political reformer.

Based on history, that person could have been John Bercow.

But what we’ve got in the circumstances as they’ve played out is a speaker who has been elected on a tired adversarial two party system: the anti-Tory choice of an anti-government moment.

It’s a peculiar new form of cross-partisanship that, in my view, will do little to unite the House and little to reassure the country that our politics and our democracy are alive.