John Bercow has just declared that he will oppose an invitation for Donald Trump to speak in either Westminster Hall or the Royal Gallery when, or should that be if, the US President comes on a state visit to Britain. The Speaker of the House of Commons’ opposition makes it extremely difficult for any invitation to be offered for Trump to address both Houses.
Bercow’s argument is not simply that Trump hasn’t been president long enough to merit the honour, but that the Commons’ opposition to, to use his own words, ‘racism and sexism’ mean that such an invitation would be inappropriate. This is a quite remarkable slap at the head of a state of an allied nation; remember that the President of China—a one-party, human-rights abusing state—addressed the Royal Gallery less than two years ago.
There’ll be lots of MPs who agree with Bercow, and there was applause from the opposition benches following his announcement, but this grandstanding feels inappropriate to me. First of all, as William Lenthall famously told Charles I, the Speaker of the Commons has ‘neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this house is pleased to direct me’. One wonders if Bercow has taken sufficient soundings across the House before making this headline-grabbing announcement. It certainly seems to have taken some senior Conservative backbenchers, who one would have thought Bercow would have wanted to have spoken to before acting, by surprise. Second, it seems rather premature given that we don’t even know when Trump is meant to be visiting.
In Speaker’s House there are portraits of those who have served as Speaker. Tellingly, Bercow is the only one who is shown talking to the House—which rather sums up the problem with his approach to the job. His ego has prevented him from heeding Lenthall’s wise words.
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