Focusing on Bercow won't change the 'toxic culture' of bullying in the Commons

Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions was a little shorter than usual. This was partly because, as James says, John Bercow spoke rather less. Normally, the Speaker likes to lecture MPs about how their behaviour will appear to the public, even sometimes using the word ‘bullying’. Such lectures will have considerably less force now, given Bercow is one of those criticised by the Dame Laura Cox report for failing to tackle the ‘toxic culture’ of bullying and sexual harassment in the House of Commons.

There has, though, been undue focus on Bercow as a result of the way some on both sides have been approaching this matter. Labour’s frontbench line that Brexit is so important that the Speaker cannot be changed – and its backbench line offered by Margaret Beckett that Brexit ‘trumps bad behaviour’ – has come in for plenty of criticism. But some on the Tory benches who want Bercow gone are also pursuing their own interests above those of the alleged victims of harassment and bullying: they have quite obviously latched onto the report as a means of achieving what they have always wanted, rather than seeing it as a catalyst for real change in the Commons culture.