Observations on the young Bercow

John Bercow will by now be getting used to the idea of snuggling down each night in the State Bed, an elaborate Pugin four-poster in the Speaker’s House. But in the past, the accommodation that came with his political duties in Westminster consisted of the floor of my bedroom. During the mid-1980s, my home in Pimlico served as a dosshouse for Thatcherite ideologues, much to the consternation of my long-suffering parents, who would come down for breakfast to find energetic arguments taking place as to whether freedom was the mother or daughter of order.

Bercow was an agreeable enough guest, though he often struggled with domestic appliances. But my main recollection was of his love of talking. For as long as I have known him, he has been an outstanding orator. This, however, could render him rather odd as a conversationalist.

You would ask him what he thought of something or another, and a rich torrent would ensue. There would be agreeable oddities of phrase – “I don’t give a whittle or tittle . . .” – and, if agreeing with a comment you had made, he would make a reassuring humming noise, punctuating it with the words: “Oh, indeed.” If he proves a short-lived Commons Speaker, he may ultimately find it a release, for the one thing the Speaker usually doesn’t do very much is speak.

There has been much comment on how Bercow’s views have changed. By the time I knew him, he had already left the Monday Club and changed from an authoritarian right-winger to a libertarian right-winger. The true consistency in his approach lies elsewhere – in his personal ambition. It is not that his views are necessarily insincere; it is just that they are secondary to the overriding objective, which is the advancement of John Bercow.

I fell out with him when he was chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students and I was editing the FCS magazine. I included an interview with Count Nikolai Tolstoy about the forced repatriation of Cossacks at the end of the Second World War at the behest of Harold Macmillan, the future Conservative prime minister. Macmillan was then still alive and Norman Tebbit, the party chairman (whom Bercow idolised), took legal action to halt distribution of the magazine. I remember trying to talk to Bercow about the moral and historical issues, but his focus was solely on how it could all affect his career.

This sometimes backfired. When a group of us went to Downing Street for an audience with Margaret Thatcher, Bercow was anxious to reassure her that he was not unduly wild in his views, mentioning the need to win consensus for reform. Mistake. “We are a party of conviction,” Thatcher told him firmly.

Bercow was not only interested in politics. He put a reasonable effort into chasing girls, who generally found him intriguing but his intense manner off-putting. Another enthusiasm was tennis. At one stage this was combined with politics when he played the then deputy party chairman Jeffrey Archer – against whom he had the good sense to lose.

Yet nobody could question Bercow the parliamentarian’s eagerness to participate, or his enthusiasm for absorbing detail. I am sure he will be a capable Speaker. That he will be a successful one is less likely.

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