What was the Speaker of the British House of Commons thinking? This week, he declared the President of the United States unfit to address the Mother of Parliaments, because Donald Trump is a racist and a sexist.
John Bercow's job is to be impartial. He's there to referee matters in the House, not run an independent foreign policy. It's hard to imagine Canada's current House of Commons Speaker, Geoff Regan, doing anything like this. It's hard to imagine Canadians, or his colleagues, wanting him to. Leave politics to the players.
Having waded so deeply into politics, Mr. Bercow must resign. He may or may not be right that Mr. Trump is a racist and a sexist. He may or may not be right about when and where Mr. Trump should speak. That's irrelevant. Prime Minister Theresa May extended an invitation, and Mr. Bercow ought to have deferred to the concerns of the British government and its diplomacy.
What's more, British MPs and Britons have a legitimate interest in seeing and hearing Mr. Trump for themselves. He is, after all, the chief executive the country with which a Brexiting Britain desperately wants good relations, not to mention a trade deal.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Leader, demonstrated his unfitness to lead. Sounding like the leader of a minor party, he said that Speaker Bercow was "absolutely right" to prevent the U.S. president from addressing the British Parliament.
Mr. Bercow has had an unusual career in politics, starting as an intensely right-wing Conservative MP, but gradually drifting left. Rumour had it at one time that he might defect to Labour. As the Speaker, he is still an MP – but he's not a member of a political party, and normally runs unchallenged in his riding. That's how seriously the British take the independence of the position.
And this is what Mr. Bercow has chosen to use and abuse the Speaker's independence for. Once again, Donald Trump is overturning convention, and driving people around the bend.