Sally Bercow is like Marmite

You either love her or hate her. Her party, Labour, loves her and will probably give her a very safe seat to fight in the next election. Not because she is a political phenomenon, an economic genius or a selfless community activist, but because she gets up the Tories nose every time she opens her mouth – which she does daily many times a day and because she is a celebrity.

On the other hand the Conservatives, the party who she once belonged to, doesn’t like her that much. Also, most of its members dislike her husband because of her, and as irritating as he on his own, Sally’s tweets, which are more pantomime and deliberately posted to inflame don’t help much.

However, the media and some pundits think Mrs Bercow’s political teasing and her insatiable appetite for media attention will end John Bercow’s Speakership, I used to think the same but have to disagree. Now I believe John Bercow is his own worst enemy, he too revels at rubbing, the wrong way, members of the party that put him in the house and very rarely passes an opportunity to inflame them. But if anything at all Sally Bercow is actually helping him increase his popularity which could end up saving his Speakership!

One of Mr Speaker’s earliest critics and the first MP to openly call for John Bercow to step down is Conservative MP Nadine Dorries. Nadine is also the first member to have a public altercation with the Speaker in the corridors of Westminster, long before his incident in the Chambers with the Chief Whip. She is also amongst the first to publicly criticise his new dress down style and point out its damage to the role and tourism. Not to mention she is amongst the very first to show distaste to Mrs Bercow’s continuous and relentless twitter attack on the Tories. However, now Sally and Nadine seem to be buddies, not just on Twitter but in the real world. I too warmed up to Sally Bercow and can see that her tweets are more banter and mean even nasty political point scoring, but nothing more.

Maybe, the posing sensually with only a bed sheet, and the ‘my husband’ is sexy but I am more desirable is a bit much, for some – but why not use it if that’s what she’s good at. After all it did get her on the news, and covered inches of newspaper columns and apparently it was trending all day on twitter, in other words it did what it was intended to do.

At a time where celebrity equals success and is very news worthy, Sally Bercow is thrusting the Bercows firmly in the face of every man and woman in the street. We, political types, sometimes forget that beyond the Westminster village people see and evaluate things differently, that type of celebrity might seem tasteless to the political class but think middle Britain, think Jordan most people can’t get enough of her.