According to the Mail Bercow wants to desert Buckingham, rather than fight Nigel Farage at the General election, and wishes to 'Sally' forth and create a new seat where he would not be able to face a challenge from another party.
Complaining that if the tradition of not standing against the Speaker was to end Bercow said that it could be hard for any Speaker to survive for more than one parliamentary term. Well Shortarse, that depends on whether the Speaker is any good, deserves his exalted position and is seen to be 'whiter than white' - which Bercow obviously fails on each count!
Bercow is quoted as saying: "It is both possible and necessary for the Speaker to continue to be a highly active constituency MP....", yet the article says that ordinary members of the public would not be allowed to be ‘constituents’ of the Speaker’s St Stephen’s seat (do note the use of the word ordinary). If it is 'necessary for the Speaker to continue to be a highly active constituency MP' then Bercow should stand and fight his corner like a man.
Discussing the possibility of the creation of a new 'seat' Bercow said: "The Commons can always decide to do that if it wants," he told Total Politics magazine. If MPs supported such an idea, he would not oppose it. No doubt his electorate the governmment benches will tinker with our constitution once again - with, as in the case of devolution, no idea of what they are doing or what the end result will be - and vote this idea in.
It is about time that politicians stopped making their own rules and conventions and as this is a change to our electoral system perhaps it should be put to a referendum? After all it was mooted that changing First-Past-The-Post to some form of proportional representation might be included in a referendum - was it not?
If this type of 'political fixing' is allowed to continue the days of a revolution are but drawing nearer - where just possibly we may witness MPs suffering their own 'Ceausescu moment', only this time at the hands of the people!
1 comment:
Except that the part of the United Kingdom that in the 1920s decided they wanted a modern constitution (Ireland) chose precisely Bercow's solution.
Something I've never got is why Bercow is so terrible as speaker anyway. In terms of what he says on expenses he seems to capture the public mood - MP have behaved terribly and the system must change. I can understand that this pisses off Dorries and the Mail, since the narrative is supposed to be that he is just a Labour stooge, but his reforms seem to be working.
Opponents of Bercow need to point to the obvious alternative; George Young, for all his strengths and experience, was never a serious option - he was beaten by Martin last time!
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