Bercow will never be popular, but the Speaker's reforming zeal is slowly ridding parliament of its thuggish tendencies
Last week's brawl in the Commons bar, with head-butting, blood and broken glass, did nothing to improve the reputation of MPs. Drink has always been a Commons problem, cheap drink in particular. And although lunchtime drinking is in decline, those long evenings hanging around waiting for votes prove an irresistible temptation.
But let's not pretend that fisticuffs are a regular feature of the Palace of Westminster. No, the worst example of thuggish behaviour remains the main chamber itself. I'm paid to watch prime minister's questions each week. Sketchwriters are too. Broadcasters such as the BBC's Nick Robinson and Andrew Neil are employed to sit in judgment each week, analysing how well Ed or David did, pretending to be riveted.
Maybe they are riveted. I rather doubt it. I hope they're not, because this has become a staggering and useless bore-athon, in which pink-faced men hurl dodgy statistics, act out synthetic and hyperbolic displays of anger and trudge their way through the lamest jokes a scriptwriter ever penned. Around them the rest of the house behave exactly like the Muppets, bouncing around with revolving eyeballs and funny hair, making wa-wa noises. Except, to be fair, that I've already made it sound much more interesting than it actually is.
Yet PMQs is the highlight of the week. Most of the rest of parliamentary debate in the main chamber is no longer covered, except by narrow-casters such as the BBC's parliamentary channel.
But, finally, there is good news on the way. The Commons is beginning to change and much of the credit should go to a rather unpopular man at Westminster, the Speaker, John Bercow. Many Tories hate him because, having been a robust rightwinger, they think he's become a liberal apostate, under the influence of his flamboyantly anti-Conservative and publicity-loving wife, Sally. The government frontbench don't like him because he tells them to shut up occasionally. The opposition don't like him because he's not one of them.
Yet, against all the odds, Bercow is making real progress as a reformer. He is certainly calling more backbenchers than previous Speakers, and in championing the "urgent question" system, which allows topical issues to be raised at the last minute, he is slowly making the Commons more newsworthy. Some 88 requests for these have been granted since he took over, against just two in the previous 12 months.
The Commons' hours are still not family friendly, but they have been getting more so. And now Bercow is determined to win the battle against rowdiness in the chamber. As well as stopping the proceedings at regular intervals to tell MPs to calm down, he is now considering naming individual MPs who bawl and barrack during PMQs, hoping that being named and shamed by their local media will provide a useful disincentive. Some of the worst offenders are ministers and shadow ministers and it would do no harm at all if they were publicly called to account.
The half-hour allotted for PMQs has already been allowed to drift on a little if there is a statement from David Cameron at the start, to ensure backbenchers get as much time as possible to ask questions. There is not much he can do about the asinine point-scoring style; one can only hope that at some point the frontbenches start to realise how much damage they're doing to themselves, never mind to politics generally.
Bercow has had less success, so far, in stopping ministers making announcements on Radio 4 or in newspaper interviews, rather than to MPs first. He was furious about the prior leaking of the autumn statement last year, but apart from making clear his displeasure there doesn't seem to be much that the Speaker can do. Really, this is a matter for ministers and there's just the beginning of a change in mood.
Bercow's latest campaign is to professionalise the working year, by making September a proper month of work. In a recent interview for The House magazine, the journal for Westminster insiders, he suggests cutting the party conferences back to a long weekend, saying: "If the political parties wanted to stage conferences at weekends, perhaps running from a non-sitting Friday until the Sunday afternoon, they could perfectly well do so, and then it wouldn't intrude on our professional time when we're otherwise available to serve our constituents and the country as a whole." You can already hear the huffing protests: what possible business is that of his? It is, of course: if the Commons packs up in July and doesn't fully reassemble until October it looks lazy. Bercow's suggestion that the party conferences could be shortened is completely sensible.
He's now made it clear that, far from being distracted by some pretty savage criticism, he still intends to stand again and do nine years or so as Speaker. That kind of longevity would potentially make him one of the most important reformers in public life. Bercow, I think, will never be popular. There's something about his manner that will always have the sketchwriters snarling. Whether or not he is able to control MPs, he will never be able to control his wife, which will also keep the journalists going. But this is a man trying to rid parliament of its thuggish tendencies and who deserves public support for the job he is doing.
Twitter: @jackieashley