This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The Conservatives will field a candidate against the Commons Speaker, John Bercow, at the next general election, Andrea Leadsom has said.

The business secretary revealed the move, a breach of longstanding convention, as she stepped up her feud with Bercow, accusing him of breaking the rules of parliament by allowing MPs to take control of Commons business.

In a stinging attack, Leadsom said Bercow had failed in his role and had permitted a “flagrant abuse” of parliamentary process. She said the Conservative party would field a candidate in Bercow’s constituency of Buckingham at the next election as a result.

The Speaker of the Commons is an MP and stands in general elections but is usually unopposed by the major political parties.

“Give us back an impartial Speaker,” Leadsom said. Her comments come days after MPs backed a motion to take control of the Commons timetable to pass legislation to block a no-deal Brexit.

Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Leadsom said the Speaker’s role was to be “a politically impartial, independent umpire of proceedings” who was in place “to protect the constitution and oversee the behaviour of the house”.

“But last week, the current Speaker failed us,” she wrote.

Leadsom said by allowing MPs to use standing order No 24 – a procedure used to trigger emergency debates – as a means of taking over parliament’s timetable, Bercow had not “just bent the rules, he has broken them”.

She added: “What we saw on Tuesday was a flagrant abuse of this process. The standing order No 24 that the opposition proposed wasn’t appropriate for a motion. It was intended to ram through legislation for purely political motives.”

She said using the standing order in such a way would lead to the creation of “bad laws” and showed “complete disregard to the will of the people”.

Leadsom, who served as leader of the Commons for almost two years, has clashed with Bercow in the past. In May last year the Speaker was alleged to have labelled her a “stupid woman”. In March, Bercow reprimanded Leadsom for using her mobile phone during Commons business, while Leadsom later accused the Speaker of failing to show MPs “courtesy and respect”.