The Adventures of the Rt. Hon. John Bercow in Romania

I sent this John Bercow story to the Daily Telegraph and it is today's lead story on the front page. I scooped the world. 


This was the blog post I wrote and sent to the papers.

By the way, this story is not about Romania but about English politics. I have no objection whatsoever to what Mr Bercow said about immigration or anything else but I have the strongest possible objection to the Speaker of the House of Commons saying anything that anyone in the House of out of it could reasonably disagree with. He is meant to be a silent impartial semi-judicial figure in a wig and gown.

The Telegraph and Daily Mail headlines both inaccurately quoted the Speaker as saying 'Migrants are harder workers than Britons.' The other newspapers, even the left-wing Guardian, followed the Telegraph.

The Telegraph contacted Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party, who stood against Mr. Bercow at the last election. Mr Farage said, reasonably:

“It is outrageous that Mr. Bercow is happy to overthrow the wisdom of ages and think it acceptable to comment on matters that are both highly political and deeply contentious. He is a disgrace to the office of Speaker.There are very good practical and constitutional reasons why the Speaker is neutral, reasons that he obviously believes are beneath his own august self image.”

Some people in England are getting fed up with the behavior of Romanian gypsies and this makes the story more topical than would otherwise be the case. However, the  story is not about Romania or about immigration. It is purely about English politics and the once revered (what is left of it) English constitution. The English Constitution, unlike the ones of every other country in the world (Bhutan might be another exception) is ‘ unwritten’. That means it is not contained in any one document but in thousands of them, including Acts of Parliament, books of constitutional theory and  old court decisions. This means it is constantly being changed by inadvertence or on purpose. Mr. Bercow has been driving a coach and horses through it since he became Speaker.

Personally, I think Romanians and other Eastern Europeans make the perfect immigrants. I wrote about this here. I also think it is disgraceful that the UK is taking immigrants from outside Europe when there are Romanians and Bulgarians available, who are European and Christian. 

A British diplomat mentioned to me today at lunch that the British Government intends to make visa even easier for Indians to obtain. 




For those who want to know more of Mrs. Bercow, a photograph of her, wearing only a bed sheet, with the House of Commons in the background, appeared in the London Evening Standard, along wsith an interview in which she  said "Becoming Speaker has turned my husband into a sex symbol". She later said, "It was just meant to be a bit of fun, but obviously it has completely backfired on me and I look a complete idiot. This makes me feel for her. She is a rather jolly upper middle-class girl trying to have some fun but it never goes right for her. She took part in the Big Brother competition in 2011 and was, predictably I feel, the first person to be evicted.

Below by the way is Mr Bercow's coat of arms, which amused or disgusted his countrymen. The ladder represent the fact that he climbed to his present eminence from the lowly beginning as a taxi driver's son. The motto 'All are Equal' might seem very odd for a man who was a Conservative politician but nowadays conservatives and liberals in England seem to believe in equality as much as socialists. The words of the motto are punctuated by pink triangles, representing his support for equal treatment for homosexuals.