John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, has been criticised by MPs after his wife gave an extraordinary interview to launch herself as a Labour politician. Sally Bercow, 40, described her battle with drink and fondness for one-night stands in her twenties, and criticised David Cameron as a “merchant of spin”. MPs reacted with astonishment, pointing out that Mrs Bercow lives in Speaker’s House at taxpayers’ expense and questioning whether this compromised the Speaker’s independence. Mr Bercow was a Tory MP before becoming Speaker, but was elected with support of Labour MPs.
In the interview published today [3rd December 2009], Mrs Bercow said that she wanted to get rid of “skeletons” from her past before standing as a Labour councillor in Pimlico, central London, in a bid to become an MP at the next election. She said: “I was a big binge drinker in my twenties. I started drinking at Oxford, being a party girl, and it got out of control. I got a grip for a while, but in the mid-Nineties I was working in advertising and I would drink wine at lunch then go out and drink a bottle in the evening, most evenings really. I had no stop button.” Asked whether this was as excessive as she had implied, she added: “Well, OK. It was sometimes more like two bottles, except I promised John I wouldn’t say that. Have I mucked it up already?”
She became teetotal in 2000 after realising that she had put herself in danger. “I was an argumentative, stroppy drunk, picking arguments with my bosses over stupid things. Plus I’d lose my judgment and put myself in danger. I’d fall asleep on the Tube and end up in Epping or Heathrow. And I’d get into unlicensed minicabs in the early hours. All the things we’d tell our daughters not to do.”
Mrs Bercow also confessed to casual sexual encounters because of alcohol. “They weren’t romantic. They were more like flings. I wasn’t looking for love. But it’s true that I would end up sometimes at a bar and someone would send a drink over, and I’d think, ‘Why not?’ and we’d go home together. I liked the excitement of not knowing how a night was going to end. It was all very ladette — work hard, play hard. I want to run for Parliament as a Labour candidate so this has all got to come out and I’d rather tell it myself,” she told the London Evening Standard.
Mrs Bercow has been criticised recently for the way that she presented her qualifications on her CV, but she denied any intention to mislead. She also rebuffed criticism of her spending on a redecoration of Speaker’s House that she said was necessary because the dark red upset her autistic son, Oliver, 5, one of their three children. She suggested that David Cameron was a fake. “He favours the interests of the few over the mainstream majority. I do think the Tory party is for the privileged few and what it stands for isn’t in the interests of most ordinary people.” She also said that Mr Cameron could send his children to private school because there was no “real commitment” to state education.
Mr Cameron did not support Mr Bercow’s candidacy but a spokesman refused to be drawn on the issue and said that the party was supportive of the office of Speaker. Mrs Bercow may not send her children to grammar schools in her husband’s Buckinghamshire constituency because she opposes selection. She revealed that after dating Mr Bercow for six months “he dumped me for being too argumentative. But you have to remember that he was a right-wing headbanger at the time. He’s much more rounded and moderate now, and he’s rethought a lot.” Asked how it might work if she was an MP while her husband was Speaker, she said: “He’d be so tough on me though. I’d never get a question when he was in the chair. I’d have to wait till the deputy speaker was in.”
Nadine Dorries, a Tory MP who opposed Mr Bercow’s selection as Speaker, said: “We desperately need to restore authority and respect to Parliament. What this interview has done is remove any painstaking progress Parliament has made and reduced the Speaker and his office to that of a laughing stock. How can we ask the people to trust us, when the man who holds us to account has such poor judgment that he allowed his wife to give such an appalling, self-obsessed interview?” [Bit fucking rich - Ed].
The Times Online, 3rd December 2009
