Final ‘Or-derrrs': UK Commons speaker John Bercow bows out

LONDON — It’s last or-derrrs for John Bercow. He said the tennis-loving Bercow wasn’t just “a commentator offering your own opinions on the rallies you are watching, sometimes acerbic and sometimes kindly, but above all as a player in your own right.” “Although we may disagree about some of the legislative innovations you have favored, there is no doubt in my mind that you have been a great servant of this Parliament and this House of Commons,” Johnson said. “It was when he began running across conventions — changing conventions in ways that shape the Brexit process — that it all got very, very controversial.” A London cab driver’s son who began his career in the 1980s as a right-wing acolyte of Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Bercow became a modernizing speaker and sought to rein in the rowdy, booze culture of Parliament. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said Bercow had transformed Parliament “from being a gentleman’s club that happens to be in a royal palace to a genuinely democratic institution.” But he was also accused by some who had worked with him of bullying — allegations that he denies. Whale said Bercow, 56, is a complex character “from a very right-wing, staunch Thatcherite to a center, even center-left, soft Tory.” He angered some on the political right by saying in 2017 that President Donald Trump shouldn’t be allowed to address Parliament, an honor given to some of his predecessors.