John Bercow Suspended By Labour After Investigation Found Him To Be A “Serial Bully”
John Bercow has been suspended pending investigation by Labour after a report found him to be a "serial bully" (Alamy)
2 min read
The former Commons speaker John Bercow has been suspended from the Labour Party after he found to be a “serial bully”.
An investigation by Parliament's Independent Expert Panel published on Tuesday upheld 21 separate allegations against the ex-MP.
Bercow is now understood to have been administratively suspended pending an investigation by Labour, having joined the party last year.
Originally elected as a Conservative MP, he became speaker in 2009, serving in the role for a decade before leaving Parliament in 2019.
But since then he has faced numerous allegations by three former House staff relating to incidents which took place between 2009 and 2014.
One complainant claimed the former Speaker "shouted and mimicked" his employees, while another said the MP often displayed "threatening conduct" and "undermining behaviour".
A third former staff member claimed that the Speaker had subjected them to a "sustained course of conduct.. that involved repeated unfounded criticism of the complainant" which included "derogatory inferences about [his] upbringing and background".
Bercow has strongly dismissed the findings of the report, claiming that "to describe what I have experienced as a kangaroo court is grossly insulting to kangaroos".
After the report from the IEP was published this morning the former Commons leader Andrea Leadsom said Keir Starmer must expel Bercow from the Labour Party.
Officials in the House of Commons have also responded to the publication of the report, beginning steps to remove a plaque dedicating the spinning studio in Parliament’s gym to John Bercow.
The cycle studio in the gym on the parliamentary estate has been named the “John Bercow Lounge” since 2015.
The exercise facility has existed on the estate since 1999 and parliamentarians including Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab and senior Tory MP Peter Bone have been known to break a sweat there.
A House of Commons official confirmed to PoliticsHome that the plaque “will be removed in due course”.
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