John Bercow (born 19 January 1963) was a Conservative Party MP from Buckingham from 1 May 1997 to 4 November 2019 (succeeding George Walden and preceding Greg Smith) and Speaker of the House of Commons from 22 June 2009 to 4 November 2019 (succeeding Michael Martin and preceding Lindsay Hoyle).
Biography[]
John Bercow was born in Edgware, Middlesex, England in 1963, and he came from a family of Romanian-Jewish descent. He was ranked as Britain's number-one junior tennis player as a youth before bronchial asthma prevented him from pursuing a professional career, and he graduated from the University of Essex in 1985 with a first-class degree in government. Bercow was very right-wing as a youth, but he later dismissed his old views as bone-headed and called his participation in the Conservative Monday Club as utter madness. He ran an advanced speaking and campaigning course for over 10 years, training over 600 Conservatives in campaigning and communication techniques. In 1986, he was elected as a Conservative councillor in Lambeth, London, serving for four years; he launched unsuccessful bids for Parliament in 1987 and 1992 before being elected MP for Buckingham in 1997. He served in Conservative shadow cabinets, and, in 2009, he became Speaker of the House of Commons; he went on to be the first Speaker since World War II to be re-elected three times. In 2014, he became Chancellor of the University of Bedfordshire, and he also became Chancellor of the University of Essex in June 2017. A member of his party's liberal wing, in October 2018 he announced that he would step down as Speaker in the summer of 2019 due to allegations of bullying made against him. On 9 September 2019, he again announced that he would step down as Speaker on 31 October 2019 due to his disagreements with Prime Minister Boris Johnson over his handling of Brexit. He ultimately left Parliament on 4 November 2019, and, on 19 June 2021, he announced that he had joined the Labour Party a few weeks ago, calling the Conservative Party "reactionary, populist, nationalistic, and sometimes even xenophobic," and saying that he joined Labour because of his "support for equality, social justice and internationalism. That is the Labour brand."