John Bercow joining the Labour Party has become a battle of spin

The Conservatives are looking to play down the move at the end of a week that has been anything but easy, writes Chris Stevenson

John Bercow has said he recently joined the Labour Party (AP)

The move by former Commons speaker John Bercow to join the Labour Party was the subject of much debate over the weekend.

One of our readers said that the Conservatives "may well rue the day they said goodbye" to Bercow – who was the MP for Buckingham between 1997 and 2019. As the speaker has to be politically impartial, Bercow had to resign from the party when he took up the post but has said he "didn't have the slightest desire" to rejoin the Conservative Party once he stepped down.

Tories have been quick to point to the suggestion that Bercow is after the peerage that was denied to him by Boris Johnson's government, but the former MP told Sky News that what he is "motivated" by "is a commitment to equality, social justice and internationalism".

He also told the channel that the move was "not personal" against Johnson, which seems a bit of a stretch to me given that he told The Observer that today's Conservative Party is "reactionary, populist, nationalistic and sometimes even xenophobic". Strong words.

It is an assessment that a number of our readers will agree with, although some – base on the correspondence we receive – may find it harder to back the argument Bercow made to Sky News that Labour's Keir Starmer would be "vastly preferable" prime minister to Johnson.

The justice secretary, Robert Buckland, played down the move on Sunday, saying that Bercow "left the Conservative Party a long time ago" and that "joining a political party actually has the effect of diminishing the force of his voice in politics, however strong he wants it to be".

What it means for the Conservatives in the long term, if anything, is up for debate, but it certainly comes at the end of a week that certainly hasn't been easy for Johnson and his party – and I'm sure readers will have plenty more to say about it.

Yours,

Chris Stevenson

Editor, Voices