Today Commons Speaker John Bercow has upset traditionalists by presiding over a sitting of the UK Youth Parliament in the Commons chamber itself. It is the first time in history that anyone other than elected MPs have been permitted to take their seats on the green benches.
At the event, he also made an unprecedentedly robust attack on a political party for a Speaker, in reference to the British National Party. This is what he had to say:
"I'm under absolutely no obligation whatsoever to be impartial as between the forces of democracy on the one hand and the forces of evil on the other... I do feel very, very, very strongly as someone from a Jewish background that the evil of the BNP is that its whole politics is based upon and driven by hate. That is a poison which we could well do without."
Very strong stuff indeed.
Jonathan Isaby
