The unity candidate

The Sunday Times reports,

Jeremy Corbyn ‘would support John Bercow as unity PM’

This is some new meaning of the word “unity” not previously known to me. I do not believe I am alone in preferring the honest fanatic Jeremy Corbyn to John Bercow.

Jeremy Corbyn has privately told allies that he will step aside and allow someone else to become prime minister if Boris Johnson is forced from power.

Sources say the Labour leader has concluded that he would not win the support needed to lead a government of national unity. Corbyn has signalled to allies that he might support another candidate as long as it is not a Labour or Conservative MP.

John Bercow, a Tory MP before becoming Speaker of the House of Commons in 2009, has emerged as the Labour leader’s favoured compromise candidate after he ruled out Kenneth Clarke, the former chancellor, who was expelled from the Tories last month.

I suspect that this is a trial balloon designed to make Jeremy Corbyn look good by comparison, but if John Bercow does “emerge” his way into being Prime Minister it will make his decisions made as Speaker during the last three years look as if they were nothing but a conspiracy to gain power, a process of emergence from the shadows brought to the threshold of completion by his recent meeting with the EU’s President-of-whichever-bit-of-the-EU-he’s-president-of, David Sassoli.

Updated: 14th October 2019 — 3:05 pm

6 Comments

  1. The short arsed little bastard needs to be arrested for treason. Johnson would be a prodigious fool to allow the short shite to best him.

  2. Brian Micklethwait, sorta of this parish, rarely indulges in personal attacks. But he makes an exception for Mr Bercow, see here, here, here and here.

  3. Corbyn knows that Bercow would be effortlessly replaceable. (I am reminded of the jailed Hitler appointing Rosenberg leader of the National Socialists. Adolf knew there was no danger of Rosenberg solidifying support while he was inside, so he would easily resume his place as leader when released.)

    If this is attempted, it will, I hope fail, and also damage (further) Corbyn, Bercow and the current parliament, all of whom stand low in public trust already.

  4. “the current parliament, all of whom stand low in public trust already”

    In principle, in a democracy, it should not be possible for the people’s chosen representatives not to have the trust of the people who elected them.

    Real democracy has departed rather far from the theoretical model. Perhaps that is a more serious issue than the current games in Westminster. Hopefully when Brexit is over, serious attention will be given to this serious issue.

  5. It vastly amused me that Corbyn specified “Corbyn has signalled to allies that he might support another candidate as long as it is not a Labour or Conservative MP.”

    So it’s official – Berkow (with the emphasis in the “berk”) is not a conservative … who’d a thunk it, eh? >};o)

  6. Nope. Bercules’s career would be over in weeks should this scenario happen. Bercules is trying to reverse 2016, UK stays in, presto, Bercules is next EU Commissioner ready years of well paid smoked salmon and champagne

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