In boris and rees-mogg, speaker bercow has met his match | thearticle

He may not know it yet, but in Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, Speaker Bercow has, at last, met his match. The Speaker’s raison d’être, it seems, is to inconvenience the Conservative

front bench, and one of his tried and tested tricks involves interrupting a minister just as he or she reaches the climax of a speech to tell the House, in the most long-winded way possible,

to be quiet. In one move, he simultaneously disarms the minister, and insinuates to the rest of the House that he or she can’t control the Commons. On Theresa May, it worked a treat. After

confusedly thanking him for his call to order, she would become flustered and, by the time she’d recovered momentum, almost everyone had switched off. On Boris Johnson this morning, it

backfired. Without missing a beat, he swatted away Bercow’s unnecessary interruption to his first statement with a quick, good-natured quip (“Yes Mr Speaker, too much noise – and too much

negativity!”) before continuing. The Speaker seemed to deflate before our eyes. And if Boris can play Bercow, then Jacob Rees-Mogg, the new Leader of the House of Commons, will run rings

around him. Andrea Leadsom (his predecessor), was rightly praised for standing up to the Speaker, but understandably – given his downright rudeness to her – he got under her skin. Carefully

prepared digs were delivered with shrill, righteous indignation, and to the untrained eye, Bercow appeared the reasonable one. Jacob Rees-Mogg, famed for his monumental politeness and dry

humour, is a different kettle of fish altogether. This morning, he not only held his cool, but even fired the first shot in the inevitable battle with a short, neatly timed jibe. Bercow, of

course, couldn’t help but hit back, but his contribution – a pointed explanation of the etymology of the word “archaic” – sounded pompous and over the top by comparison. What’s more, when it

comes to procedural geekery, Rees-Mogg is up there with Dominic Grieve, Oliver Letwin, and Speaker Bercow himself. Where May and her colleagues were always taken by surprise when Remainers

conceived complicated procedural plots to thwart them, Boris’s government, thanks to Rees-Mogg, will be three steps ahead. As Alastair Stewart of ITV put it, listening to Rees Mogg speak

this morning was like dropping in on a top tutorial on history, laced with constitutional studies, and peppered with raw politics: very good points were batted to the boundary. It is often

said of the new Prime Minister that though he’s capable of charming voters and winning elections, he hasn’t mastered the art of speaking in the Commons. If that’s true – and his battering of

Jeremy Corbyn this morning would suggest it may not be – then putting brilliant Commons performer Jacob Rees-Mogg on the front bench was a masterstroke. Controlling the House with a working

majority of one was always going to be a tough challenge for Boris. But if today is anything to go by, he is ready to rise to it.