John Bercow

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John Simon Bercow (born January 19, 1963) is a politician and Conservative Party Member of Parliament for Buckingham in the United Kingdom. He has a majority of 18,129 voters. He has a long-standing interest in Burma and has frequently raised issues of democracy and genocide in the country. In 2006 he was made a Patron of the Tory Reform Group.

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[edit] Early life

Bercow attended the University of Essex during the 1980s. He graduated with First Class Honours in Government. During this period, he was a member of the Monday Club, becoming the secretary of its immigration and repatriation section. At the age of twenty he left the organisation, citing the extremism of many of the Monday Club's members as his reason.

After his graduation, he was appointed the National Chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students. He attracted the attention of the Conservative leadership and in 1987 was appointed by Norman Tebbit as Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Collegiate Forum, the successor of the FCS, to head the campaign for student support in the run-up to the 1987 General Election. In 1988 he joined Rowland Sallingbury Casey after a spell in merchant banking. Within five years he had become a board director.

[edit] Early political career

In 1986 he stood as a Conservative candidate in a ward in the London Borough of Lambeth. He was successfully elected onto the local council and sat on it for four years. In 1987 he was appointed the youngest Deputy Group Leader in the United Kingdom. He first attempted to enter parliament in 1987 when he stood as a Conservative candidate in the general election for Motherwell. He was not elected. He stood again in the 1992 General Election in the constituency of Bristol South. Again he failed to be elected. This however did not hold back his political career; in 1995 he was appointed as Special Adviser to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury Jonathan Aitken, and after Aitken's resignation to fight his ill-judged libel action, Bercow served as a Special Adviser to the Secretary of State for National Heritage, Virginia Bottomley. In the 1997 General Election, he became the Member of Parliament for Buckingham with a majority of 12,386.

[edit] Parliamentary career

Bercow shifted his politics, embressing social liberalism, at about the same time as his then colleague, Michael Portillo. In 2000 supported the successful attempt to reduce the gay age of consent to 16. He also supported the bar the following year on MPs becoming members of the Monday Club, an organisation of which he is a former member.[1]

Bercow rose quickly through the oppositio's junior ranks before joining the Shadow Cabinet in 2001 under the then party leader Iain Duncan Smith. During his first spell on the front bench Bercow publicly confessed that his lack of ruthlessness would prevent him from rising any further through the ranks.

This proved to be the case when the Government unveiled a Bill to allow unmarried gay and heterosexual couples to adopt children. Despite the bill being a matter of conscience, Duncan Smith imposed a three-line whip rather than allowing a free vote. In protest, Bercow defied the whips and voted with the government. He then resigned from the front bench.[2] As a backbencher he was openly critical of the leadership declaring that IDS was about as likely to "meet an Eskimo in the desert" as he was to win the 2005 General Election.[3]

[edit] Return to the Front Bench

In 2003 the new Conservative Leader Michael Howard appointed Bercow the Shadow International Development Secretary. In 2005, he won the Channel Four/Hansard Society Political Award for Opposition MP of the Year. With a colleague, he runs the Advanced Speaking and Campaigning course, which has trained over 600 Conservatives, including several current MPs. He has also lectured in the United States to students of the Leadership Institute.

[edit] Opposition MP of the year

On 8 February 2006, Bercow won the Channel Four/Hansard Society Political Award for Opposition MP of the Year for 2005. He said,

I shall treasure this award and I am extremely grateful to my colleagues for it. Winning it has raised the question of what is good opposition. I think that the public is fed up with one politician simply ranting at another politician for the sake of it. The public deserves to see a more measured and constructive approach to politics. In addition to pursuing a wide variety of local issues, I have attempted to question, probe and scrutinise the Government in the House of Commons on important national and international topics which concern people. Over the last 12 months, I have constantly pressed the case for reform of world trade rules to give the poorest people on the planet a chance to sell their products and improve their quality of life. The plight of the people of Darfur, Western Sudan, has also been a regular theme. They have suffered too much for too long with too little done about the situation. I shall go on arguing for Britain to take the lead in the international community in seeking decisive action for peace and justice.[4]

[edit] Personal life

Bercow married his wife Sally Illman in December 2002. They have two sons, Oliver born in December 2003 and Freddie born in November 2005. It is well known that his wife is a sympathetic to the Labour Party.[5] His constituency website states: "Outside of politics, John enjoys tennis, squash, swimming, reading and music. He is a qualified lawn tennis coach."

[edit] External links

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
George Walden		 Member of Parliament for Buckingham
1997 – present		 Incumbent
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