Suffice it to say, then, that Bercow’s brief re-emergence into public view this week hardly came as a surprise. It all started on Sunday, when he told the Observer that he had joined the Labour Party. The story made the newspaper’s front page, even though his transfer of allegiance was hardly a surprise. Personally, I had expected it to happen 14 years ago, in June 2007.

That was when the news broke that a Conservative MP had been so enamoured and enthused by the prospect of Gordon Brown’s move from Number 11 to Number 10 Downing Street that he had chosen to cross the floor of the House.

The minute I heard the news I assumed it must be the then MP for Buckingham, John Bercow — a man who had already adopted the most ingratiating manner imaginable whenever he spoke across the Commons floor from the government of Tony Blair. He oozed and schmoozed and exuded a pseudo-charm devoid of wit and without much discernible purpose.

On that occasion, however, the Conservative MP who crossed the floor was Quentin Davies. John Bercow had missed his chance. Or so it seemed.

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Why would a former member of the Monday Club give it all up to join a beleaguered Labour Party? The most plausible reason is, as so often, a personal one.

In 2002 Bercow married a Labour Party activist called Sally, and it is clear from his memoirs that it was a transformative match. The unattractive, dwarfish Bercow could not believe his luck at bagging a tall, leggy blonde several times his height. He spent the ensuing period not just counting his luck but trying to make sure that he continued to dazzle her, principally by adapting his politics to fit hers: a strategy that turned out to be largely unsuccessful.

In any case, during his time as Speaker, Bercow’s political sympathies were clear. The famous side-eye that David Cameron frequently gave him was well-earned, as was the amused acceptance of his charms by successive Labour front-benchers who accepted the fealty and fawning of the man in the speaker’s chair with much the same good humour as an organ-grinder regarding his monkey.

But now the monkey in question has been caught in a lie. While giving an interview on Sunday to Sky News, Bercow presented his decision to join Labour as though it were solely a question of principle. “The real issue”, he insisted, “is who has the vision of a more equitable society, who thirsts to deliver social mobility, who wants to better the lot of people less fortunate? On that, Keir Starmer is vastly preferable to Boris Johnson.”

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It was classic Bercow, of course. Who honestly uses the word “thirsts” in relation to “social mobility”? The excellent Trevor Phillips, who was interviewing him, wasn’t convinced. Was this not all about something else entirely? Was his decision to switch to Labour simply a calculation to get around the Conservative Party’s clear refusal to put him in the House of Lords by throwing in his lot with Labour?

Bercow, however, was in high dudgeon at such a low motive being attributed to him.

“I’ve had absolutely no discussion whatsoever, either with Keir Starmer or any other member of the Labour leadership about that matter. There has been no barter, no trade, no deal whatsoever. And if I may very politely say so, and I do, the people who make what they think is that potent and coruscating criticism of me are operating according to their own rather low standards.”

Again, it was classic Bercow: grandiose, self-sanitising, pompous and untrue — as we were to discover not more than 24 hours later, when The Times published a letter which Bercow had written to Jeremy Corbyn while he was still Labour leader. It proved to be just one part of the former Speaker’s campaign to lobby Corbyn, having been preceded by a number of secret meetings with the Labour leader in the aftermath of the 2019 election.

It might have been possible for Bercow to present the Times emails as forgeries, were it not for their all-too-predictable style. For example, in his explanation for his suitability for the Upper House, Bercow boasted that he had held “no fewer than five shadow ministerial roles”. It was typical Bercow self-praise. All of these roles were performed in remarkably quick succession, during a tumultuous, talent-short period of Conservative opposition. And all were performed by Bercow without any distinction.

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Then came the clincher — the absolute proof that this was not the creation of a Russian forgery operation or the like. Bercow, in his exhaustive account of his political career, went on to explain that not only had he once served as deputy leader of the Tory group on Lambeth council, but he is “a qualified lawn tennis coach”. Anyone who has read Unspeakable — and I appreciate that we are few — will immediately hear the clear ring of truth in this last boast.

Why should that preclude him from the House of Lords? It is true, of course, that the Upper Chamber contains some remarkably unimpressive figures. But only John Bercow, in the full flight of his seriousness, would imagine that what the Lords needs is an amateur tennis coach. No foreign agent could have inserted this detail. No critic of the former Speaker within the Conservative or Labour parties could have fabricated it. It is John Bercow through and through. A year later, he remains as unspeakable as ever.

It’s a reasonable question, on the face of it. Why should anyone listen more carefully or be better-disposed to me because I took a couple of minutes out of my morning to fasten the top button of my shirt and secure a length of cotton or silk round my neck? Why don’t we just relax and show up in T-shirts and flip-flops? After all, the argument goes, we’re all just shaved monkeys underneath, and it’s the ideas in our heads and the goodness in our hearts that matter.

I’m not sure this quite settles the matter. As I said to my son, albeit not quite in these words, taking time to make yourself smart is a signal that you are going to take someone seriously. It’s a gesture of respect, an indication that you are treating this encounter with the weight it deserves.

I’d make a similar defence of manners. Michael Gove ruffled a few feathers last week when he stated that, given the coronavirus situation, wearing a face mask while shopping was “basic good manners”. It struck me that it’s quite unusual to hear senior politicians talking sincerely about the importance of manners and politeness.

Like formal dress, manners — understood in the broad sense, as shared codes for personal conduct, common expectations of how one should react and behave in particular situations — are often derided by a certain kind of pseudo-sophisticated person. Why bother with the artifice? Aren’t manners simply hypocrisy, encouraging us to conceal our real feelings and thus stifling our authentic selves? Wouldn’t it be healthier if we said what we thought, so everyone knew where they stood?

This latter question arises from what the writer-doctor Theodore Dalrymple calls “the hydraulic theory of human behaviour”, where repression, so-called, is seen as very dangerous because it will eventually result in a great uncontrolled outburst of pent-up emotion, and prevents us from showing our true self, that is to say our most strongly-felt impulses. Much healthier, in this view, to let it at all hang out and not take the risk of leaving a thought or feeling unexpressed.

But this comes at the matter from the wrong direction. The sceptical position on manners suggests that we shouldn’t care about mere forms of speech, as what matters is substance. On the contrary, being careful to put others at ease, to show them that you consider them an equal, and that you value their time, is deeply substantial.

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To say “please” and “thank you” to someone, to listen carefully to them, to not impose on them your noise or the odour of your food or the obscenity on your T-shirt, is not mere prissiness. It is an act of humility and kindness. It is a way of making clear that you prioritise their comfort over your own convenience or your own self-expression.

Taking your litter home, being quiet on public transport, and friendly and considerate to people who serve you in shops, are never going to be lauded in the history books, but they do contribute massively to the public good. They help people relax and find contentment and peace. They help others feel at home in the world. They treat the world as if it is genuinely a shared place, where we must take into account the needs of others, rather than one  dominated by the loudest and strongest and least considerate.

Manners can have another role. They are part of how we distinguish between the different roles which we play in public life, and between our public roles and our private lives.

A good example of this can be found in the final episode of the television show Band of Brothers. Quite by chance, the main character Dick Winters encounters his old adversary Captain Sobel. As a major, Winters now outranks Sobel, but when he was a lowly second lieutenant in basic training Sobel, his commanding officer, was extremely unpleasant to him; a strong antagonism exists between them, not helped by the fact that by this point Winters has proved himself a brave, effective and popular leader of men and Sobel has been prevented from going into combat. As they pass, Sobel does not salute Winters, as he ought to do, and Winters rebukes him: “We salute the rank, not the man”.

The point here is that sophisticated human societies and organisations, such as armies, cannot function without the willingness to separate the private individual from his or her public role, and without a clear conception that there are certain behaviours, attitudes and demeanours befitting a public role regardless of what the individual in that role might believe or prefer.

When I call a judge “Your Honour” or an MP refers to an opponent as the Right Honourable Member, this is not a judgment about the personal virtues of the person addressed — it is a sign of respect for the role itself. A judge is the representative of the Crown and of the law. A Member of Parliament fills an ancient role in the British constitution. A policeman or a doctor or a teacher are entitled to our deference to their professional expertise not because all police officers or doctors or teachers are especially admirable people in private life but because that particular profession is a creditable vocation, and because that role in society must be treated with respect.

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The formal dress and unusual patterns of speech associated with particular positions help to reinforce this distinction, and the broader point that the office is larger and more significant than any particular person who holds it. Some people chafe against this — differing attitudes to the interplay between individuals’ private and public roles are both cause and effect of political difference.

One thinks of John Bercow, former Speaker of the House of Commons. During his decade in the role he shed almost all the last vestiges of traditional dress, while simultaneously (and not coincidentally) thrusting himself and his own views into the forefront of political debate in a way that rode roughshod over the numerous conventions and traditions governing the neutrality of the Speaker.

We might equally consider the case of the UK Supreme Court, whose judges do not wear formal court dress. When the UKSC handed down its enormously controversial judgment on last September’s prorogation, the President Lady Hale was wearing a large spider-shaped brooch, which subsequently became a symbol of opposition to the Tory government. It cannot be healthy for a free law-governed society if figures such as judges, whose job is to interpret the law without fear or favour, become rallying points for one side of a partisan divide, and such an outcome could easily have been avoided by having the members of our highest court wear sombre formal clothes without individual accoutrements.

If proper dress is worn, the individual becomes more clearly subsumed in the role. The same is true with regard to the forms of words used in civic and religious ceremonies; they constantly remind us the focus of what is going on is not the individuals currently present, but something greater, more enduring and more important.

I wonder whether some of the modern antipathy to cultivating good manners is that they are generally a quiet and unshowy form of virtue. It’s difficult to post on social media about how impressive your manners are, because they so often consist of what you don’t say, what you don’t do, and of small gestures and minor sacrifices known only to yourself. Observing socially beneficial taboos can feel like ploughing a lonely furrow, but it is worth it.

For one thing, an enormous amount of great art has been generated by the need to approach certain matters obliquely or euphemistically. Much classic love poetry is of this kind; or consider the books of Jane Austen, where so much of the drama and humour arises from the gap — inevitable in a world of numerous taboos — between what is said and what is meant, between the things that characters want to do and the things that they must do. Consider even film noir, where stars like Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall electrified the screen with sexual tension. Filmmakers were so limited in what they could show that they had to find all sorts of clever ways to portray attraction and generate chemistry between their leads.

I don’t doubt that there are downsides for societies that become excessively or obsessively focused on correct form and external proprieties. But it is worth noting that even apparently restrictive codes of behaviour can have unexpected benefits. Take, for instance, a workplace that insists on smart business clothing every day. On a superficial level, this is exclusionary. What about people who don’t want to dress that way for whatever reason?

Equally, however, it is a fair, explicit and visible statement by an organisation of what constitutes appropriate and professional behaviour. It is arguably much more egalitarian than the realistic alternative, where all sorts of dress are allowed and so assessments of professionalism are based instead on individuals’ knowledge of implicit and invisible norms and codes of behaviour and language, knowledge that may only be available to people from certain backgrounds. It’s better to have strict but clear open rules than strict and opaque secret rules.

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It’s also worth thinking about the ways in which social taboos, even when resented, can benefit individuals. In the film Brief Encounter, for instance, the keenly-felt and strongly-enforced expectation of decent behaviour helps to stop the lead characters from making the terrible mistake of running away together, and the lesser but still potentially serious one of consummating their relationship.

Obviously Brief Encounter is fiction, but it is a very good illustration of how social pressure to conform to certain behavioural patterns can help to save you from yourself — and save other people from the consequences of selfish or reckless behaviour. Indeed, one general problem for defenders of social conservatism is that so many of the benefits of our worldview are effectively invisible, because they are things that don’t happen.

A significant political objection arises here, one which motivates many critics of manners. To follow social norms is to accept, at least to some extent, the authority of society over the individual. Implicit in the very concept of manners is the admission that how you present yourself to the world matters, that you cannot simply write off other people’s impressions of your behaviour and of the way you present yourself in the world. It is easy to see how this might be unpalatable for a generation of individualists, who view freedom as synonymous with self-actualisation and to whom no unchosen obligation can possibly be truly binding.

Nevertheless, the discipline of manners is worth the effort. It is good to develop the habit of not treating your moods, preferences and impulses as cosmic imperatives which cannot be challenged or gainsaid. For me to keep my feelings to myself is a decision not to treat the world merely as a stage for my own personal drama. It is a blow against the mentality where everyone else is a supporting character in the Story Of Me. And in the age of social media, that doesn’t sound so bad.

On page one we discover that “In Parliament, naturally and properly, everything said is recorded and published verbatim.” A page later we learn that “predictably, and perfectly properly, the Attorney General said…” Two pages on and we can read of how “I therefore intervened good-naturedly, saying ‘I do not normally offer stylistic advice to the Attorney General, but his tendency to perambulate while prating is disagreeable to the House.’” A witticism that I am sure readers will (both good-naturedly and perfectly properly) be grateful to the former Speaker for capturing between hard covers.

The audience for this book is anyone eager to relive the glory days of the 2019 Parliament: anyone keen to reminiscence about what happened when Parliament was prorogued and then de-prorogued. The difference this time is that it can all be refracted through the lens of John Bercow’s own personal views, which had previously been a mystery.

So the reader can be reminded of that day last year when Parliament reconvened and Geoffrey Cox referred to a matter that “in advocacy terms” is “what we used to call a ‘when did you stop beating your wife?’ question.” But here we have an added editorial.  Of this comment Bercow writes, “The reference to the ‘when did you stop beating your wife?’ question rightly went down extremely badly in the House, especially but not only with female colleagues.”

While examples of others’ verbal malpractice abound, it is to the author’s credit and the reader’s good fortune that an example is always on hand to showcase best practice. Through tense times our guide remains resolute. “What I was not prepared to do was to behave hypocritically,” he informs the reader. “The abuse of power was foiled, but make no mistake. That is precisely what it was: an abuse of power.” And again, “It was never any part of my role to serve as a nodding donkey or quiescent lickspittle of the executive branch of our political system.”

Happily Unspeakable is not just a blow-by-blow account of last autumn. It is also the story of how John Bercow came to be the man he almost is. We learn of his parentage, of how his maternal grandmother was said to have had a brief affair with “a local toff” who “promptly scarpered, offering not a penny piece to support her in the raising of my mother, Brenda.”

We learn of his schooldays, of how young John played the recorder “without distinction” but excelled at tennis and politics. How different the history of politics — not to mention recorder playing — might have been had such talents been reversed. We also learn of how, at Finchley Manorhill, the young Bercow was struck down by acne. “At first, it was a modest affliction – I would apply a cream and the problem would go.” Later gels and “liquid solutions” were proffered, but the problem did not go away. “It festered. It intensified.” Rarely has a work’s better subtitle hidden in such plain sight.

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It is with a certain inevitability that this youth found his way into 1980s party activism. The combination of ambition and resentment hurtled him into the Finchley branch of the Conservatives, where perhaps his zeal was a tad overzealous. He describes how in January 1981 he “made a fateful political choice” and “the most shameful decision I have ever made. I applied to join the Monday Club, a hard-Right Conservative pressure group that had been set up in the 1960s.” The group’s policies included support for minority rule in what was then Rhodesia, a stance with which the Thatcher government — “I later came to believe, both justly and wisely” — disagreed.

Yet whatever the missteps, the ambition made up for them, and by the time the decade was out the thrusting young Right-winger was on the up — only for the fates to choose this moment to take a run at him.

At “a large dinner” in Nottingham around the time of the 1992 election, organised by the Conservative Students conference, Bercow met a tall young blonde woman “who was looking more than a little bored”. This lady who he feared was “way out of my league” turned out to be one Sally Illman. Unfortunately she was already moving to the Left and rejected his early wooing attempts, reportedly viewing the young Bercow as “far too staid”. Over the ensuing years he worked on two uncomplementary projects: one was advancing within the Conservative Party. The other was advancing on the woman who would become Sally Bercow.

Although he occasionally tries to suggest there were hurdles, during these years the party’s support for Bercow was remarkable. Its desire to find him a Parliamentary seat was so considerable that before the 1997 election he was actually helicoptered from one constituency association audition to another. This worked, and in 1997 he ran as the Conservative candidate in the safe seat of Buckingham and retained the seat for the party.

But in the wider country the Blairite era had begun. And as the mores of the time changed and the wellsprings of power shifted, so Bercow’s politics strangely shifted too. The former firebrand of the Monday Club became obsessed with Left-wing social justice, racial issues, LGBT equality and the importance of “diversity”.

Having alienated the leadership of his own party throughout the 2000s, he made the wise decision to suck up to any and all members of the party opposite, which happened to be the party of government. His questions to the government benches became positively adoring.

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And so a decade after his eyes first locked level with her knees, Bercow finally proved himself worthy to marry Ms Illman. Of his own attractions he remained clear-eyed: “I am not good-looking, but rather rat-like and somewhat intense.” Yet he is generous enough to recognise his own virtues: “I do not panic, get tongue-tied or descend into umm-ing and ah-ing in responding to questions.”

In 2009 Michael Martin stepped down and it was the Conservatives’ turn to nominate a Speaker. Labour were more than happy to elect to the post someone from the Conservative benches who they knew was loathed by his own party. So to the Speaker’s chair Bercow was dragged, and there he sat and reigned for 11 glorious years.

All humiliations behind him, today he stands at the summit of national and international affairs, a vantage point from which he is able to pass judgement on the whole carnival that has passed before him. Doing his bit to earn out his publisher’s advance he declares David Cameron to be “insubstantial”, an “opportunist lightweight” and “a 24-carat snob”.

William Hague he calls “impersonal, mechanical, an upmarket, efficient hack – and an ex-teenage nerd who as a schoolboy had pored over parliamentary debates”. Terms in which the teenage Bercow could never be described.

Now that the modernising speaker’s gown is off, the venom is continuous and one-directional. He claims that Toby Young’s views show him to be “a misogynist who also held deplorable views about gays, the disabled and the poor”. He describes Theresa May as “wooden as your average coffee table, a worthy public servant but as dull as ditch-water”. Michael Gove is “oleaginous” while Boris Johnson is variously described as “disingenuous”, guilty of being “accused of bigotry” and “at his occasional best, a passably adequate politician in an age not replete with them”.

Newspaper editors who ever ran anything critical about the silly and self-destructive Sally are dismissed as “snobs and chauvinists”. By the book’s end Bercow is lashing out in all directions like a schoolboy in the playground trying the “windmill” manoeuvre with his arms circling wildly against larger foes. He dismisses the Conservative party membership who gave him his career as being — in their totality — “elderly and extreme”. Anyone who ever expressed criticism of him ends up being dismissed as “bigoted”.

His positively pontifical reviews of world leaders who spoke in Parliament during his tenure extend to an actual Pope – Benedict XVI. He quotes Sally’s criticism of the former Cardinal Ratzinger that he had among other things been reluctant “to come clean about his involvement in the Hitler Youth as a young German”.

Nevertheless one learns a number of things from Bercow’s exegesis of Benedict’s Westminster speech: “The Pope’s stance – which of course reflected that of the Catholic Church…” On Benedict, Bercow continues, “Perfectly reasonably, he spoke in English, but his delivery was uninspiring.” How sad that neither Sally or John chose to give a pep talk to the pontiff.

Perhaps all this makes Bercow sound ungenerous, and yet he is reliably effusive in his estimations of his self. Frequent examples are given of his own witticisms. “Sometimes I would just say, ‘We have got the gist’, ‘I think a question mark is coming now’, or ‘The abridged rather than the War and Peace version would be appreciated’.”

“Whether I was a good Speaker is not for me to say,” he concedes at one point. But analysing the various pros and cons of his years in the chair, on balance he writes “It is only fair to recall that, alongside the complainants, many constituents professed themselves perfectly happy… I could not please everyone but I must have been doing something right.”

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Any time that Parliament has an opportunity to praise the Speaker the results are quoted. “Of all the Speakers who have sat in the Speaker’s Chair since I was elected, he is the best” is one quote from Harriet Harman that Bercow feels compelled to save from the dustheap of Hansard. He also unexpectedly finds himself innocent of all bullying charges against himself, including one about which he writes, “In my opinion, the disagreement between us did not constitute bullying in any way.” Which — perhaps predictably and even properly — must surely constitute an end to the matter.

Unspeakable is an autobiography and so charges that it is self-serving are unfair. But the work does provide an opportunity to survey and summarise for ourselves — as all autobiographies must (look how addictive this style is) — whatever the life of its subject amounts to.

To this observer it is clear that perhaps there once was a John Bercow. An ambitious, thrusting, embittered person he became an avatar of ambition for whatever age he found himself in. In one era he thought it advantageous to believe one thing. When the mores changed the same person found himself hammering his fists just as vociferously for another cause.

The best evidence of his fundamental absence lies not in his actions but in that one constant give-away: his language. Not just the caveats and quibbles or the odious, affected flourishes and archaisms, but a whole language and manner into which the man so deeply dug his life that he eventually stood no hope of extracting himself.

There is footage somewhere online of Bercow caught by a reporter in the streets of London last year. Bercow is in his civvies. Yet he immediately slips into that strange register into which his life has become caught: all menacing jollity and forced, frustrated badinage.

After reading his life story the reader is left with an impression of a man who has spent his life doing an impression of a man. Whatever else once existed long-ago disappeared in a small puff of unwise, and probably improper, self-regard.

Wondering when all this political polarisation will end and people will learn to, like, chillax again? Curious as to what life with a politicised judiciary will be like? Thinking about the long-term consequences of all those cool new tricks that John Bercow has conjured forth from hitherto arcane parliamentary precedents?

Well, I am here to reveal all — and I don’t even need to stare at a chicken’s entrails to do it. You see, I’ve been living in the US for the past 13 years, a land where unhinged levels of polarisation and an ultra-politicised judiciary are par for the course. And all of this has given me a certain degree of insight as to the future facing the land of my birth.

So let’s answer some questions and see what lies in store. After all, the future is already upon us.

1: I’m tired of Brexit and wish that people would stop thinking in ludicrously binary terms and treating politics as a zero-sum war against pure evil. When will it end?

Never. Or at least, not any time soon. I arrived in the US in 2006, while the Iraq War was raging and memories of Florida, “hanging chads” and a very sad Al Gore from six years earlier still divided the nation. Indeed, I vividly recall walking into a Barnes & Noble where there was a table heaped high with books dedicated to the then-thriving genre of Bush-hate, which had also spawned TV shows, stage productions, websites and even a movie portraying his assassination.

This doesn’t seem healthy, I thought, but at least he’ll be gone in two years’ time. The rage will burn itself out… then Obama was elected and, for a second, it really did seem as if the spirit of kumbaya was abroad in the land, and that maybe, just maybe, people would settle down a little bit.

But before you knew it, he was talking about government healthcare and stimulus spending, and suddenly a terror of socialism gripped the hearts of freedom-loving patriots, the Tea Party was on the march, and angry people were stockpiling ammo lest the government come for their guns, etc. It all got to be very, very exhausting. Then we got Trump, who successfully scrambled the brains of his opponents, his own party and the media, and it got even more exhausting.

It’s bad my friends, it’s bad. Of course, you might argue that the US was settled by millenarian Puritans not known for their love of nuance, and so they have form for this kind of stuff, while good old Britannia will get over it. But the Brexit vote was a once-in-a-generation decision that will change the country forever, whereas Americans can and do kick out their presidents on a regular basis, yet still they rage as if “The Republic” were perpetually on the verge of extinction. Brexit strikes deeper; so whether the vote is respected or somehow overturned, there is no path forward that does not involve great bitterness.

Expect shrieking, paranoia, and more reductio ad Hitlerams than you can shake a copy of The Guardian at. You can also expect that voices of reason will arise, you know, like Ian Austin’s just announced Mainstream movement.

They will be ignored.

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2: So what should I expect from a politicised Supreme Court?

Yeah, you’re going to really hate that.

I mean, it’s not that I actually believe that Boris Johnson was all that interested in the Queen’s Speech either. I just assumed that everybody knew and agreed that, in politics, hypocrisy, game-playing and general chicanery come with the territory — like that time John Major prorogued Parliament to duck the cash-for-questions scandal. You know, the same John Major who took Boris Johnson to court to prevent him from proroguing Parliament to stop it from messing with his Brexit mojo. And yet here we are, with the Supreme Court getting mixed up with this mess, and ruling that Boris acted “unlawfully” and is a very naughty boy.

In the US, of course, the Supreme Court is constantly being asked to deliver judgments on issues that divide the country along partisan lines, and its judges can almost always be relied on to vote on entirely partisan lines (except for the lonely guy who has to referee between the two sides). Annoyed by the teaching of evolution? Do you desire to burn the flag? Pro- or anti-abortion? Let’s ask the folk on the Supreme Court what they think.

In fact, here in the States, the justices on the court are celebrities, the objects of hate and/or adoration depending on your political views. Heck, I spotted a hagiographic book about Sonia Sotomayor in the kids’ section of my local library the other week. Meanwhile Ruth Bader Ginsburg is such an icon that Hollywood made a film about her life, starring an actress from one of those rubbish Star Wars films Disney has been making, and you can even buy Catholic-style candles with her face on them instead of a saint. Really.

Politicised judiciaries are a symptom of polarised politics; when nobody can agree on anything, a handful of unelected people in robes step in. Already I have heard fantasies about tossing Johnson in jail if he refuses to pursue a Brexit extension. But this is just the start.

Now that the judges are wading into politics, prepare for immense acrimony. You will see more lawfare, as people try to take down governments they dislike through the courts. You will learn the names of the judges. You will discover how the judges are appointed. Newspapers will start to dig into their political affiliations. You will learn whether they ever wore blackface, about the bar fights they instigated at UB40 concerts in the 1980s, and you will see them attacked and vilified by politicians on the Right and Left.

You will wish you could go back to the old days, when judges were old folk in curly wigs.

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3. OK, but what about the legacy of John Bercow? At least Parliament is more powerful now, right?

Attitudes to the actions of the Speaker in the ongoing parliamentary shenanigans serve as a Brexit Rorschach test. If you’re for Remain, then his interpretation of the rules is a pretty butterfly, if you’re for Leave, it’s a dead dog with its head split open by a meat cleaver.

Regardless, the glee felt by Boris-haters may well turn out to be short lived. For while it may feel empowering to delay Brexit, and to force him to submit a letter to the EU asking for an extension, it is evident that Parliament has no strategy other than to humiliate and torment the PM. It is also obvious that the leader of the opposition is afraid of an election as he thinks he might lose. After all, Boris is not exactly collapsing in the polls.

But the larger and most obvious point is that Bercow’s innovations, cooked up in the heat of Parliament’s nervous breakdown will — like the politicisation of the judiciary — have all kinds of consequences further down the road. Here in the US we tend to be a little more straightforward, but blowing up tradition can still backfire, and quickly. In 2013, when the Democrats grew tired of Senate Republicans blocking Obama’s executive and judicial nominees they didn’t discover new possibilities in old rulings, but rather exercised the “nuclear option” by simply changing the existing rules, lowering the threshold for approval from 60 votes to 51. Hey presto, they could now get their nominations through the Senate.

It felt good at the time, but a precedent had been set, and the Republicans under Trump would soon go further and apply the same reduced threshold to Supreme Court nominations. Enter stage right Brett Kavanaugh, who, because he could not be blocked by the Democrats in the Senate, had to be destroyed by other means. And yet, today he sits on the bench regardless. The Democrats lost.

And so it is that one day the new rules of Parliament laid down by Bercow will be used against some of those celebrating them now, and there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth when it does happen.

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4. This future you’re talking about is totally depressing. Is there anything I can do about it?

No. The bitterness, the rancour, it runs deep, and shall abide.

What do I do, out here in my hyper-polarised future? Well, I don’t watch a whole lot of news, as the news that matters finds me anyway. I don’t do social media. I do read poetry, and visit state parks with my family, and listen to music. Recently, for instance, I got through all ten of Mahler’s symphonies, plus Das Lied von der Erde. That was nice.

Well OK, there is at least one bit of good news. You live in the UK, and whenever the UK attempts to copy something the US is doing, it always comes out a bit crap. Think about those giant strip malls in American cities, vast and filled with restaurant chains, gyms, cinemas and shopping options. Transplant them to Britain and what do you get? Maybe a bowling alley and a McDonald’s next to a car park on the outskirts of Basildon. Our version of hyper-polarisation will likely be a slightly more feeble imitation of the American original.

But that small comfort aside, I recommend that you settle in, and make yourself comfortable. You are in it for the long haul.

Yet a glance at the history of Speakers of the House of Commons shows that being the most treacherous ever is quite a big ask: they have, after all, been associated with regicide, rebellion, insurgency, and defiance of the monarch.

Speakers, it turns out, are not dull functionaries or bland chair people. Instead, they are colourful political players who as often as not are willing to invent or tweak the rules to support or undermine whatever political side seems to them in the best interests of the country – or in their own best interests. Neutral doesn’t come in to it.

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Take William Lenthall, for example, Speaker from 1640 until 1660. Lenthall was in the awkward position of being Speaker of the House of Commons just as its conflict with King Charles I reached such a pitch that the English Civil War would ensue.

In theory, the Speaker’s role was to carry news about legislation from the Commons to the monarch. However, Lenthall, a puritan, saw the Commons as able to repel “invaders of the church and commonwealth” (Catholics) and thus free the king “from the interpretation of misdoing”. This was a sturdy attempt at impartiality, but Lenthall was soon under fire for being biased.

On 9 January 1641 Sir Henry Mildmay blamed him for letting too many speak during a debate, and on 9 March he was accused of partiality in a squabble between members. But the real challenge came when on 4 January 1642 when King Charles attempted to arrest five members of the Commons and one of the Lords, entering the House of Commons in search of them. Of course, he found that the birds had flown. Quickly, Lenthall fell to his knees before his king and said:

“May it please your majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this house is pleased to direct me whose servant I am here; and humbly beg your majesty’s pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this is to what your majesty is pleased to demand of me.”

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This courageous and clever response combined a defence of the Commons with deference to the King – but Lenthall was also making it clear that he was not going to give away the whereabouts of the men the monarch sought.

He held on to his difficult task as parliament became the executive ruler of the country (having executed the King). Like the current Speaker, Lenthall had to resist popular pressure. In the summer of 1647 he was impeded by a London crowd that included apprentices and disbanded soldiers. Lenthall announced that votes in the Commons had been forced, making them void in his judgement: the crowd, he claimed, had “jostle[d], pull[ed] and hale[d] the Speaker all the way he went down to his coach”.

Lenthall – through deft political manoeuvring in first supporting the idea of a Cromwellian monarchy and then being one of the founders of the Restoration of Charles II – managed to garner a peerage and considerable wealth despite his critics. Whether Bercow receives the same honour remains to be seen, but there is speculation that his perceived anti-government bias could make him the first Speaker in 230 years not to be offered a position in the House of Lords.

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Other Speakers have suffered worse fates. Thomas Thorpe, for example, a Speaker during the Wars of the Roses, was strongly Lancastrian. Speaker for just one year from 1453 to 1454, he had an adventurous life. In 1450 he was denounced by Kentish rebels as a supporter of the Duke of Suffolk. When the court confronted the Duke of York at St Albans on 22 May, Thorpe – along with the Duke of Somerset – was said to have failed to prevent the battle because he intercepted conciliatory messages from the Duke to King Henry. Thorpe was among those subsequently accused of having fled the field, leaving his armour behind like a coward.

Captured in 1460 after the Battle of Northampton and brought back to London as a prisoner he escaped, but was recaptured. Sent to the Tower, he then escaped a second time. But on 17 February 1461 he was caught by a London mob in Harringay and lynched by beheading.

As well as the animosity of the crowd, Speakers could also face the rage of the monarch, since it was their responsibility to deliver the bad news that the Commons had not liked his or her proposals.

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The first Speaker, Sir Peter de la Mare (1376), was imprisoned as a result of his work. Presiding over the Good Parliament of the same year, it was his support for a coalition of interest groups excluded by the corrupt regime of King Edward III that got him into trouble – the king and his courtiers took against his efforts to inform them about disenfranchised merchants and dodgy deals favouring the King’s mistress. Sir Thomas More, Speaker in 1523, was executed in 1535 for refusing to swear the oath declaring Henry VIII to be the head of the church.

And then there is Edmond Dudley, whose nominal crime was that during the last illness of Henry VII he had ordered his friends to assemble in arms in case the King died, but who was actually hated for his corrupt financial wheeling and dealing. Along with another former Speaker, Sir Richard Empson, Dudley was executed on 17 August 1510 on Tower Hill. (His son was also executed for treason after his attempt to install Lady Jane Grey on the throne.)

Speakers, then, have never been grey functionaries, but protagonists with their own agendas and interests. In this sense, John Bercow is not destroying one of the great traditions of the eccentric House of Commons. Instead, he is doing exactly what his illustrious predecessors did. If our Speakers ever do become the kind of completely impartial functionaries that some newspapers appear to seek, our country will be much the poorer for it.