John Bercow blasts Brexit

When John Bercow was House of Commons Speaker, there was a sense on both sides that he was a politician who did not think much of Brexit. Despite the role of Speaker being a supposedly neutral job, Bercow’s decisions regarding Commons procedure led many to suspect that he held strong views on the issue.

Now Bercow has confirmed this. Just six days after Bercow left his ‘high chair’ (as Boris Johnson called it), the former Speaker has said Brexit is ‘the biggest foreign policy mistake in the post-war period’.

So did Bercow’s views on Brexit make it hard for him to be impartial when he was speaker? Not so, Bercow told journalists at the Foreign Press Association earlier today. I ‘always treated the Brexiteers in a fair way’ and ‘always treated the Remainers in a fair way,’ he said. Bercow then added:

‘I will assert to anybody that will listen until my dying day that I have been impartial in the chair, pro-Parliament and impartial in the chair.