‘A secret plot to boot John Bercow out of the Commons is being drawn up by senior Tory MPs,’ reported yesterday’s Mail on Sunday. Apparently a plan is afoot to field ‘a “proper” Tory candidate against him’, something that would
‘drive a coach and horses through the convention at Westminster that sitting Commons Speakers are never challenged at General Elections by candidates from the three main political parties’.
This ‘convention’ sounds a little iffy to Mr S, especially given that Labour
stood against Speaker Weatherill and Speaker Selwyn Lloyd and Speaker Hylton-Foster and Speaker Clifton Brown and Speaker FitzRoy.
In fact, the only Tory Speakers that Labour failed to stand against in the last hundred years appear to be Whitley and Morrison (though their Independent Labour Party stooges did oppose him) and Bercow. Until Bercow in 2010, Labour had opposed the previous three Tory Speakers (and five of the last six).
Like so many great ‘conventions’ in politics, the rule goes out of the window as soon as a Tory is involved.
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