We should judge Bercow at the end of this Parliament

David Ossitt

“But he's brought a vigour and forthrightness to the role that was lacking under his predecessor, and seems to have pushed reform where he can.”

Anyone would have been an improvement on his predecessor.

This man; is a little shit, a man without honour, let him be gone, lest he do further damage to the House of Commons.

Robert Eve

Here's hoping he is thrown out!

Norman Dee

In the main I agree with you, except I think he will win uncomfortably close as ID predicts.

Prodicus

Efficiency in a Speaker counts for nothing compared with honour, which Bercow lacks. Out.

Haldane

As a backbencher he regularly jeered and heckled members of his own party who stood up to speak in the House - all to curry favour with the Labour benches opposite. Let's not forget that he also exploited the expenses system to the utmost extent.

Shouldn't insights into character inform judgement of the man? In which case, he clearly is not honourable and as such should not be the public face of Parliament nor should such a man be charged with modernising our parliament. You can't be suggesting we can't find an MP who is both decent and a moderniser?

Vulture

If they don't throw this self-important, dishonest, pompous, house-fiddling, expenses-troughing, coat-turning little weasel and his deeply unpleasant Liebore wife out on their ears we will know one thing for sure.

Parliament will be a pushover for an over-mighty executive and all the talk about the New Politics will be so much fart gas from Nick Clegg's posterior.

The vote today would be an important sign of new MPs saying: we want an honest Speaker to represent us. If Bercow is re-elected it will show we plebs that its business as usual in the House of Thieves.

Having said that, that silly old Gordon Brown adoring, Liebore-loving 'Ming' would hardly be an improvement. How about Kate Hoey?

Ralph

An honourable Speaker who holds his post because of political game playing in a discredited parliament would have resigned by now. However good he now is he'll be tarnished for not having done the right thing.

JohnPage

Forget Ming, who could prove ineffective.

The Speaker should always come from the Opposition.

Tim

The forthcoming sh*tstorm at IPSA will need someone who offers continuity to sort it out.

It's an absolute joke how they've set that thing up, with all the money for office-running going through MPs personal bank accounts, where formerly we had direct payment by the House.

Liz Brown

Bercow out..........pompous and full of his own importance - yeuk

Hawkeye

I've only ever seen Bercow on TV and he comes across as "oily". Ming, OTOH, comes across as ineffectual. The HoC needs another Betty Boothroyd. She may have been a leftie, but she was fair and kept the place in hand.

Who would I put forward? David Davis.

Ricky

If anyone represents the whiff of venality exemplified by the ancien regime, it is this man.

He must be replaced. And fast.

And there must be no more high spending by any government figure - from the next Speaker to the Attorney General - on luxurious apartments and offices - whilst the rest of us feel the enduring pain from the hangover left behind by the Tax & Spend Nasty Party.

Ian Walker

If the Speaker doesn't command the respect of the whole house, then he ought to go. Unfortunately, this man won't quit, and the House won't have the willpower to get rid of him. So much for the New Politics!

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

Not sure about Ming as the actual Speaker, but he's a good stalking horse. A perverse part of me would love to see Speaker Brown...

Hawkeye

@vulture - just noticed your Kate Koey "nomination". Good choice. I also enjoyed your description of Bercow.

Keep up the good work.

jaybs

I supported Bercow in the first place but in the last Parliament it became clear he is not up to the job, he is far to flippant. I trust new MP's will treat this matter seriously and today decide Change is needed for a fresh start.

I am sure Mr Bercow will be happy in the Upper Chamber.

strapworld

YES, Vulture as normal hits the right note. Time for another woman speaker. Kate Hoey has proved her independence of mind, her courage and respect for the House of Commons. It would be rather fitting for her to be placed in the speakers chair.

Go for it commons, elect an opposition party speaker, elect Kate Hoey.

But I suppose the cowards will stand by the man who gives all gnomes a bad name.

Walsingham's Ghost

@ JohnPage

"The Speaker should always come from the Opposition."

Agree - let's bring back Betty Boothroyd!

WG

Snowman

Vulture @ 9.55 has my backing, the lot, down to the Hoey nomination. The man’s a creep, and makes the House smell of the recent past.

Simon Stephenson

In making your various recommendations for Speaker, how many of you who are restricting your choices to those who are MPs are doing so because "that's how it is done", and how many because you have reached the conclusion that it is impossible for there to be a better choice of Speaker than one selected from the 649 people so far elected to the House of Commons?

Nicholas

I don't like the way he threw out the traditional garb of the Speaker. That is the arrogance of "progress". To me it represented the continuity of Parliament and a reminder that the crowd occupying it are just tenants and have an obligation to continue something admirable and proven for the benefit of future generations. What we get instead is this arrogant idea that all change is "progress" and all "progress" is good, from mortal numpties who have no idea and little care what their legacies to future generations will be.

The fact that he was able to do this, without any great reaction or comment, speaks volumes about the shabby little country we have become. Anyone who wants to remind themselves of the moronic and arrogant twaddle that passes for popular commentary these days should watch Studio Five Live - but you won't last long and your TV set will be in danger. The two big-mouthed and opinionated girls on that show must have been specially chosen for the absence of anything approaching a brain within their tiny skulls.

(There you go Ghengiz, I'm again extending the subject beyond the parameters of how it began)

Nicholas Hallam

I'm afraid the Tories have made a rod for their own back on this. By pushing for a replacement for Martin while Labour still had a large parliamentary majority, they made it highly likely that the Speaker would be a figure antipathetic to them. The fact that Bercow was at least nominally a Tory MP just made it more delicious for their enemies.

If Bercow were not the incumbent now he wouldn't have a chance. As it is I expect him to pull through.

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

OIK! OIK!

Osred

If he represents the best that Parliament can offer in terms of authority, respect, probity, and constitutional knowledge then he should be re-elected.

As it is he owes his position to Brown/Labour spite in the wake of the redaction of freeloadin' corruption protectin' Speaker Martin.

Pete

"On paper, all the arithmetic works in his favour."

Here's *my* arithmetic:

Mortgage/rent £13,958
Cleaning, laundry £400
Food,£1,100
Repairs/renovation £2525
ACA other £5,100

Flipped homes twice, paid no capital gains tax on either sale. Said he had done nothing wrong, but "voluntarily" paid £6508 plus VAT to the taxman, tax he could have been required to pay on one of the sales.

He claimed a total of £143,455 in second home allowances between 2001 and 2008.

From the Daily Telegraph Complete Expenses File.

He's a 'trougher' and should go.

Fergus Pickering

Everybody agres that Bercow's a creep. Does Kate Hoey want the job? She can have it if she does. VOTE HOEY!

Swiss Bob

If Parliament wants to prove that it has changed then Bercow must go.

Add to that he is a bloody awful Speaker.

denis cooper

Personalities aside, I want a Speaker who's totally committed to the supremacy of our national Parliament, not to the primacy of EU treaties and laws.

That immediately rules out Menzies Campbell.

Remember that it was Campbell who first reneged on the Liberal Democrat pledge to support a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, in the last months of his leadership.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2007/sep/14/libdem2007.eu

I look down the lists of "ayes" and "noes" for Division 120 on New Clause 9 on the evening of March 5th 2008:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm080305/debtext/80305-0024.htm

and see that at least Edward Leigh was amongst those who voted in favour of affirming and protecting the supremacy of our Parliament, against the expressed wishes of David Cameron, while at least Kate Hoey did not troop through the "no" lobby with the rest of her Labour colleagues.

I take the simple and single-minded view that the presiding officer of the House of Commons should above all believe in our national parliamentary democracy, and with great passion; and just as in a previous age the Speaker should not have been the tool of the monarch so he should not now be the tool of the EU.

Stephen Bowers

To quote Gerge W Bush- "A major league asshole".

A slimy little two faced shit, only worthy of being a labour MP (which he well and truly is).

2trueblue

Nicholas, totally agree with you. He is such a vain little man with a massive ego. He arbitrarly chose to do away with tradition and no one shallenged him. OUT.

Verity

I would second both Vulture and Nicholas. It infuriated me that that little flea had the audacity to throw out the traditional garb of the Speaker.

He's a nasty, skittering cockroach. His place is under the skirting board, not on the Speaker's chair.

Noa Zrk

"We should judge Bercow at the end of this Parliament".

In truth Mr Hoskin, I had already formed my opinion of him before the end of the last Parliament.

And it will only change if he does.

Chuck Unsworth

Pete,

You propose that Bercow should be given a second chance.

Why?

'Solid' performance? I disagree. I think he has, at best, a tenuous grasp and understanding of the great traditions of Parliament - witness his naive and ill-considered (if considered at all) attempts to 'modernise' and 'popularise'.

Those traditions have been founded in the bitter and lengthy experience of centuries. Cast them aside at your peril.

We have let a child loose in the nuclear power station. Please God let no harm come to him - or to us.