John bercow

If ever there was a tell-tale sign of who won the Great War between the Speaker and the Clerk of the Commons, it was today’s Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year awards. Sir Robert Rogers picked up the top prize, declaring: ‘Common sense and good governance will prevail before very long’. Mr Speaker failed to show up. The guest of honour, Home Secretary Theresa May, delivered her own comedy turn making jokes about George Osborne’s haircut. She had a point. Her barbed comment that her ‘special advisers had told her’ this would be a ‘good idea’ had a particular resonance given her starring role on the cover of this quarter’s edition of Spectator

In his campaign to make every single member of the Conservative benches want to throttle him, the Speaker launched a bizarre broadside against Winston Churchill’s grandson Sir Nicholas Soames on Monday. Hansard reports the moment as such: Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con): Is my hon. Friend aware of the serial bad behaviour by the Co-op in my constituency and others in the south, where it is taking over pubs and converting them into shops, often on very unsatisfactory sites? The Ship Inn in Cuckfield in my constituency is uniquely badly placed to serve as a Co-op. Will he look at what he can do to review the article 4

The government is in a total mess this afternoon. The whole house of Commons has turned on Theresa May and Chris Grayling for the way they have handled the vote on the European arrest warrant. MP after MP is calling, via points of order, for the motion to be withdrawn. The whips are in frantic conversation. Update, 17.26  May is now speaking and she appears to be sticking to her line. I hear that whips are trying to get all of the payroll vote ready to support the business motion that the house will vote on, as there are fears that the government will lose it.

A little later today, MPs will move from discussing ‘Ukraine, Middle East, North Africa and Security’, a debate title that shows how dreadful the international scene is at the moment, to discussing the governance of the House of Commons. This, for those who had been distracted from the issue by other less important matters, is the latest stage in the row about the Speaker’s plan to appoint Carol Mills as the Clerk. Two camps have emerged in the past week. There are those who are after the Speaker himself, who see him as ‘damaged goods’ and don’t think he can command the respect of the House. And then there are

‘A secret plot to boot John Bercow out of the Commons is being drawn up by senior Tory MPs,’ reported yesterday’s Mail on Sunday. Apparently a plan is afoot to field ‘a “proper” Tory candidate against him’, something that would ‘drive a coach and horses through the convention at Westminster that sitting Commons Speakers are never challenged at General Elections by candidates from the three main political parties’. This ‘convention’ sounds a little iffy to Mr S, especially given that Labour stood against Speaker Weatherill and Speaker Selwyn Lloyd and Speaker Hylton-Foster and Speaker Clifton Brown and Speaker FitzRoy. In fact, the only Tory Speakers that Labour failed to stand

MPs are continuing to chip away at John Bercow as best they can. At questions following the Business Statement in the Commons this morning, Simon Burns repeated his question about that ‘floating’ letter that he mentioned after Prime Minister’s Questions and which the Prime Minister has been joking about to Tory MPs. Hague pointed out that ‘things do not float around in Number 10. That is not the way Number 10 operates, I’m very pleased to say. The Prime Minister has received a letter this week from you, Mr Speaker, I’m sure you don’t mind me saying, in which you ask that the appointment of Carol Mills is delayed further

It was widely noted that the Prime Minister remained grinning in his seat after PMQs to hear a Point of Order directed to the Speaker from Tory MP Simon Burns. Burns wanted to know whether the Speaker would withdraw his letter of recommendation for Carol Mills as Clerk of the House. The letter is currently languishing in Number 10. What’s more, Mr Steerpike hears that a guffawing David Cameron fired up his backbenchers for today’s skirmish at last night’s meeting of Conservative MPs in the Boothroyd Room. ‘What does he want me to do with this letter?’ quipped the PM, adding: ‘Shall I just stuff it down the side of

‘It was an utter humiliation’, says Bercow’s biographer, after the Speaker was openly mocked by MPs as he retreated in the row over who will be the new Commons clerk. listen to ‘John Bercow: ‘Modest pause’ in Commons clerk recruitment’ on Audioboo

The campaign against Speaker Bercow’s plan to appoint Carol Mills as Clerk of the House is growing on the Tory backbenches. Coffee House has today been contacted by a series of Conservative MPs keen to emphasise the rise in opposition among their number. They claim 10 Tories have joined the campaign this morning and that more are ‘very concerned’ and considering joining what appears to be a loosely co-ordinated backbench push against the appointment taking place without a pre-selection hearing. One opponent says the swell in numbers has taken place because the revolt is now clearly cross-party rather than simply Conservative enemies of Bercow. The MP added: ‘No-one likes the

The pressure was all on Miliband today. With Cameron hurt, he needed to show that he can still press home an advantage. First, we all had to listen to the Speaker, who rather enjoys listening to himself. He began with a long and winding overture about the dangers of prejudicing the Coulson trial. One sentence would have done it: yesterday’s convictions are mentionable, those due today aren’t. But he rambled on and on. His legal witterings were delivered with all the clunking sonorities and ham pauses of an under-employed luvvie delivering the Gettysburg address. And he couldn’t stop interfering during the debate. Miliband had carefully planned his ambush and committed

As the economy bounces back it keeps smacking Ed Miliband in the face. At PMQs today he tried to pose as the people’s champion fighting fat-cat capitalism. He started with Royal Mail, which is now worth a billion more than when it was floated. In hindsight, any privatisation can look like a Westminster mega-blunder or a Square Mile stitch-up. Miliband took the latter view. Referring to the clique of 16 ‘golden ticket’ investors, he asked why these lucky speculators had been allowed to flip their shares for an instant profit while the hard-working posties had been ordered to retain theirs for three years. Cameron spotted the trick. Posties got free

John Bercow doesn’t like Prime Minister’s Questions. He’s told the BBC in an interview that it is ‘so bad’—in other words, rowdy—that a bunch of female MPs no longer attend. PMQs is becoming particularly partisan with the approach of the election. Miliband has abandoned his attempts to change it just as quickly as Cameron did before him. But Bercow would do well to look closely at his own role in setting the tone of these sessions. From the chair, Bercow understandably tries to silence the hecklers. But, sometimes, he seems to be indulging in a bit of ‘Punch and Judy’ too. Often he moves into put-down mode, trying to get

One of the regular duties of a Work and Pensions minister is to defend his or her programme of reform against criticisms from all sides about how it is administered. At today’s Work and Pensions questions in the Commons, Mike Penning didn’t try all that hard, though, to defend Atos Healthcare and its contract to carry out the Work Capability Assessment. Instead, he described the situation as a ‘mess’ and blamed the last Labour government for the contract. listen to ‘Penning: Atos contract ‘a mess’ created by the ‘previous government’’ on Audioboo