WATCH: Farage Booed During First Westminster Speech as he Slams Brexit Blocker Speaker Bercow

UK Parliament
Oliver JJ Lane

Nigel Farage didn’t come in peace to Britain’s Parliament for his first ever speech this week, and was booed by some members as he criticised past conduct of the house for trying to overturn Brexit.

Britain’s House of Commons elected its speaker on Tuesday afternoon at its first sitting after electing new members in the national General Election last week, and that work dispensed with every party leader in the House was given the opportunity to make a short speech welcoming the new speaker to his place.

While newly minted Members of Parliament can often wait weeks to make their maiden speeches in the House, Mr Farage was called upon on the first day of sitting as the leader of Reform UK, and while fulsomely praising the re-elected speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, he also had a barb for his predecessor. Mr Farage got a laugh from the floor with a self-depricating opening, referencing the fact he had been elected weekend in his eighth Parliamentary election going back all the way to 1994, and said: “We are the new kids on the block, we have no experience in their parliament although some of us have tried many times over the years previously to get here.”

Mr Farage said as an outsider to Westminster he and others saw that Hoyle “brought tremendous dignity to the role of Speaker”, and consequently the Reform Party delegation “absolutely endorse” the veteran left-wing politician for the politically neutral role. But these qualities were not ones Hoyle’s predecessor, John Bercow held, Mr Farage said, causing heckles and boos to be directed at him from other members.

Farage said Hoyle’s qualities are: “I must say, in marked contrast to the little man who that there before you and who besmirched the office so dreadfully, in doing his best to overturn the biggest democratic result in the history of the country. We support you sir, fully.”

John Bercow was a source of enormous controversy, never mind of frustration to Brexiteers, in the final years of his tenure as Speaker as he repeatedly used the power of his office to frustrate the Brexit process inside Parliament, contributing to the chaos of the Theresa May years. After he left office, Bercow admitted to using his power in this way, even boasting he’d “facilitated” the prevention of a clean-break Brexit.

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