For a bunch of people who owe their jobs in Westminster to the simplest of all electoral systems, MPs can be surprisingly obtuse voters, certainly when it comes to declaring who they intend to support in the preferential system of voting that will decide the outcome of tomorrow’s election of the Speaker of the House of Commons.

Having announced my intention to retire at the 2010 general election I wasn’t really expecting to embroil myself in another electoral contest until the diminutive figure of John Bercow bounced up and asked whether I’d consider running his campaign for Speaker.

At the time parliament was in turmoil with MPs rocked by the expenses scandal and the government trying to cope with the aftershocks of the global financial