John Bercow is unlikely to receive a peerage, but he is the only Speaker with a bricks-and-mortar monument. Parliament’s nursery, built on the site of what was one of Westminster’s many bars, was one of his first projects as Speaker and, as with so many innovations, many of its beneficiaries have forgotten its origins. Only the other day I chatted to an MP with their beautiful baby in tow: that is to say, they talked while I cooed over the baby. As they headed off, they made a disparaging remark about the departing Speaker and how they had “disagreed with everything” he had done in office. Not quite everything, clearly.
That’s Bercow’s story in microcosm. Allegations of bullying mean that his entry into the House of Lords may be blocked. So how did a Speaker who presided over a series of reforms and boosted the power of backbenchers against the executive leave office with quite so many MPs convinced that they were at odds with him? How did he manage to depart with his legacy intact and largely beloved, but his own role in it forgotten? Unspeakable is not the story of how that happened, but it does provide part of the answer as to why, in part because of what the book fails to do.
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