THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019 The Boston Globe Metro B5
ber, visited the Globe amid
heightened tension between
Johnson’s Conservative govern-
ment and Parliament, where
the prime minister does not
command a majority.
Many British legislators
viewed Johnson’s decision last
week to suspend Parliament
until mid-October as a cynically
transparent ploy to run out the
clock before the Brexit dead-
line, when Britain is scheduled
to sever itself from the Europe-
an Union.
Like Trump, who has cham-
pioned Johnson, the prime
minister portrays himself as a
populist fighting an entrenched
political establishment, and his
intentions to honor the Com-
mons-approved extension are
uncertain.
Such defiance of Parliament
would stir further controversy
and unease in a country that,
despite its ancient roots of rep-
resentative government, does
not have a written constitution.
Bercow said he has procedural
options to prevent a no-deal Br-
exit without Commons approv-
al, but he would not specify
them.
“In the end, Parliament will
be at the heart of the decision-
making process and nothing is
going to change that fact,” Ber-
cow said. “There’s a very old
saying in our country, ‘Be you
ever so high, the law is above
you.’ ”
Bercow, 56, has been look-
ing up throughout his life. At 5
feet, 6 inches, he is not a tower-
ing physical presence in the
speaker’s chair. But what he
lacks in height, he has made up
with a sense of aggressive flam-
boyance that mixes hubris, hu-
mor, and polysyllabic rhetoric.
His booming calls for “Or-
der! Order!” have become a sty-
listic trademark for this son of a
North London cabdriver and
grandson of a Romanian immi-
grant.
“Order,” however, is elusive
in British politics at the mo-
ment. And the finale to the lat-
est Brexit crisis is anybody’s
uBERCOW
Continued from Page B1
guess, Bercow said.
“I have no way of knowing.
Anybody who thinks he or she
can predict with great confi-
dence the outcome is either
much, much cleverer than I or a
reckless fool. I really find it im-
possible to say,” Bercow said.
A written constitution for
the United Kingdom is worth
considering, he said.
“I think there is a compel-
ling case in the light of all that
has happened in recent times,”
Bercow said. “I think there is a
case for saying, ‘Could our con-
stitutional arrangements be
done differently and better?’ ”
During a decade as speaker
— the first Jewish lawmaker to
hold the position — he has up-
ended convention.
Instead of being a low-pro-
file referee who blandly inter-
prets the rules, Bercow has
used the job to champion the
rank-and-file, the so-called par-
liamentary backbenchers who
previously had been expected
to follow the orders of party
leadership in lockstep.
The backbenchers now have
avoice,andthathasinfuriated
many Conservatives. Bercow
had been a member of the party
until he became speaker, when
he dropped his party affiliation,
as is customary.
“The speaker should be look-
ing to ensure that their voices,
their opinions, their concerns,
their anxieties are heard,” said
Bercow, who climbed the politi-
cal ladder in the Conservative
Party but has since drifted from
the right. “So that people can
question, can probe, can scruti-
nize, can challenge, can contra-
dict, or even expose the errors
of omission or commission of
the government.”
Bercow’s stop at the Globe
was part of an American speak-
ing tour that took him to New
York University and the John F.
Kennedy School of Government
at Harvard University, among
other appearances.
In the interview, Bercow la-
mented the political hostility
that finds voice on social media.
“The fact that there is a dem-
ocratic space through socialmedia for millions of people to
express their views who didn’t
previously have a forum in
which to do so because they
weren’t elected politicians, or
senior public officials with a
public voice, or journalists is a
good thing,” he said.
The ugly side features “key-
board warriors who think they
have a right to berate, ha-
rangue, intimidate, or threaten
anyone who dares to take a
view that differs from their
own,” Bercow said. “The partic-
ularly alarming feature of it is
the descent into threats and in-
timidation and, in some cases,
violence.”
Bercow cited the 2016 mur-
der of Jo Cox, a Labor Party
member of Parliament.
“She was murdered in the
cold light of day simply for be-
ing who she was and doing her
job and standing up for her
constituents and for the values
that she cherished,” Bercow
said. “And she was murdered by
an extremist, a fascist, a neo-
Nazi.”
Bercow declined to com-
ment directly on Trump admin-
istration policies or the presi-
dent’s effect on populism in
Britain.
“Relations between the Unit-
ed Kingdom and the United
States are of the highest impor-
tance, and they will be pre-
served indefinitely. The prime
ministers come and go, the
presidents come and go, but the
relationship continues,” he said.
Bercow, however, did offer
an unsolicited compliment for
Barack Obama.
“I very greatly enjoyed wel-
coming President Obama to
Westminster Hall in May 2011,”
Bercow said of the centuries-old
seat of the House of Commons
and House of Lords. “He deliv-
ered a fine address to both
houses, and I remember it as
keenly today as if it was deliv-
ered yesterday.”
Trump, by contrast, has not
been invited.Brian MacQuarrie can be
reached at
[email protected].Bercow takes the high road
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