Speaker's right at home with Labour candidate

Published on Friday 13 November 2009 21:10

SPEAKER John Bercow insisted yesterday that his wife's decision to stand as a Labour candidate would have no effect on his ability to chair the Commons in an "impartial and fair" way.

Mr Bercow, who sat on the Conservative benches before being elected Speaker in June, said there was nothing "embarrassing" for him about his wife, Sally, contesting a Tory ward on Westminster City Council.

In a BBC interview to be broadcast on Sunday, Mr Bercow says: "My wife isn't my chattel, she's my wife. She is a private citizen who has her own views and is an independent person.

"And it has long been known that my wife is a supporter of the Labour Party, so I don't think there's anything odd, embarrassing and certainly nothing underhand about it."

Mr Bercow said he rejected the "old-fashioned sexist view" that a politician's spouse should do what she is told by her husband to support his political career.

And he said that, since their 2002 wedding, he had become used to jibes over the fact that they are on opposite sides of the political divide. "I have been accustomed, as she's been accustomed, to criticism," he said.

"We've been used to Sally being described as a cross between Jerry Hall and Lady Macbeth, and now I have to get used to the idea that she will be judged a cross between Jerry Hall, Lady Macbeth and Eva Peron, and frankly I'm very relaxed about it."