John Bercow has received his fair share of fawning eulogies of late, as the House of Commons laments his departure as Speaker. But, unsurprisingly, several MPs are equally happy to see him go. Today was Tory MP Andrew Bridgen’s turn to pass on his farewell – the MP was in Parliament to debate the recent report on Keith Vaz’s suspension. Bridgen began by discussing the report, but rather got under John Bercow’s skin when he turned to the Speaker’s own conduct in the Vaz affair:
‘There have many tributes to you today, and I would wish to add my own. In that if you had acted on the letter I wrote to you in September 2015… where I raised my concerns with you that the actions and activities of [Keith Vaz]… if they came to light, would risk seriously damaging…’
The dig led to Bercow interrupting the speech and launching a remarkable rant, in which he defended his decision not to proceed with complaints about Vaz, saying it was ‘not for the Speaker to perform a second job as a kind of night time Columbo.’
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