Commons Speaker John Bercow must have hated it: he had to grovel to a backbencher last night. Worse, it was one of the Tories he seems so little to like. Andrew Bridgen MP complained in the House that Bercow had vastly exaggerated the number of times he (Bridgen) had erred during debates.
Bercow had sharply told off Bridgen last Thursday and complained that it was the 21st occasion on which he had been out of order. Not so, insisted Bridgen. And he wanted an apology.
It is most unusual for an MP to question the Chair in this way. Bercow had no alternative but to apologise. As he put it, he realised that he was in a position of “when in a hole, stop digging”.
A long, typically flowery paragraph of Bercow-ese proceeded to flow as he admitted that he had “lured” himself into “multiplying by three the number of times when I had had occasion to adjust his line of questioning”.
No one can remember Bercow being quite so keen to “adjust the line of questioning” of a Labour MP.
