Some contributors have asked me why I did not write about the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, on Sunday. I had sort of meant to, but in the end I wrote so much on other things that I had no room. I did feel the subject had been very much written about, and wasn’t sure I had anything especially new to say.



I take the widespread view that it is ridiculous for Mr Speaker to have got so worked up about Donald Trump once he had happily entertained the President of the Chinese despotism. Now that visit, by the leader of the world's biggest prison state, would have been a moment to make a fuss (the Prince of Wales, often mistaken, has to his credit done much to reveal his misgivings about Britain’s glutinous dalliance with the Chinese despotism).

Mr Bercow says he's against 'racism' and 'sexism'. These are often quite broad terms. You will have to tell me whether the decades during which Chinese baby girls were selectively massacred in the womb under the one-child policy was 'sexist', or whether China's treatment of Tibetans and Uighurs in their Chinese-occupied homelands is 'racist'. But they are certainly not very creditable.

I yield to no-one in my disdain for Mr Trump (and assure those who seem to hope otherwise that this is a genuine, profound feeling). But he is in the end the constitutionally and lawfully chosen leader of a free country, a country which makes a reasonable stab at the rule of law (though it’s by no means above criticism). He runs no secret police force, nor rigged courts nor an empire of labour camps. China does.

To object to a Parliamentary visit by President Trump, having smilingly accepted one by President Xi, is to strain at a gnat having swallowed a camel.

In penance, Mr Bercow should immediately abandon his braid-trimmed Euro-robe, in which he looks like the Burgomeister of some Rhineland dorp, and return to the proper attire of a British Speaker, knee-breeches, buckled shoes and a full-bottomed wig, worn (like a Judge's robes and wig) to emphasise that he is the holder of a great office, rather than an individual. Had he abandoned any ceremonial dress at all, his position would be stronger. The braided robe leaves him with no real defence. It was time for someone to reverse Betty Boothroyd’s mistaken decision to abandon the long horsehair headpiece, and Bercow, oddly enough, was the man to do it.

Because, you see, he is actually rather a good thing. Full disclosure: In the late spring of last year Mr Bercow invited me to take part in a debate on the EU issue in his constituency. He drove me to the location in his own car (thus saving me the train fare to Milton Keynes and the bus fare on to Buckingham). We conversed in a friendly fashion the whole way. He is an interesting person who has lived an interesting life. I think I got a cup of tea and a biscuit as well.

I think he has done several very good things as Speaker, especially by forcing ministers to come to the Commons to answer urgent questions, a practice which really ought to have been in existence anyway, and which has brought back life to Parliament. When one considers that one past speaker was the unfortunate Selwyn Lloyd, who had actually lied to the House about Suez while Foreign Secretary in 1956, surely a disqualification from the job, Mr Bercow's annoying independence of Downing Street is a good thing in itself. I think he has given backbenchers more opportunities to speak, and I think his efforts to ensure that MPs are heard rather than shouted down by whip-organised claques have been creditable and partly successful.

More important, many of the media attacks on him seem to me to serve the interests of Downing Street and the Executive. In any conflict between Speaker, Parliament and executive, I never have to ask which side I am on. Nor should you

Nobody can really be in much doubt of Mr Bercow’s present politics, which are (as far as I am concerned) almost entirely mistaken and horribly politically correct. I don’t see it as much of a revelation to be told that he voted to stay in the EU. So what? The question is whether he chairs debates in Parliament in a way which is politically partial. I have seen no claims that he does so, and he has supporters and enemies, as far as I can gather, on both sides of the House. What he certainly shouldn’t be is a humble servant of the government, as some speakers, shamefully, have been.