THE former House of Commons Speaker and Essex University Chancellor John Bercow has announced he is to join the Labour party in an astonishing political U-turn.

Mr Bercow, who graduated from Essex with a double first in 1985, had served as a Conservative MP for Buckingham for 22 years between 1997 and 2019.

However, he cited his motivation in joining the Labour party as a “commitment to equality, social justice and internationalism”.

Mr Bercow, who ws appointed at Chancellor at the University of Essex in 2017, also took aim at Prime Minister Boris Johnson, branding him a “lousy governor” and criticised the Conservative Party for becoming “reactionary, populist, nationalistic and sometimes even xenophobic” under his leadership.

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Serving as the Speaker for the House of Commons until November 2019, Bercow often cut a controversial figure and he faced a number of bullying accusations from former parliamentary aides, which he has strongly denied.

When accused of making the political U-turn in order to improve his chances of securing a peerage to the House of Lords - which had previously been blocked by the Conservative Party - Mr Bercow responded there had been “no barter, no trade, no deal whatsoever” between himself and the Labour Party.

Mr Bercow said: “I’ve had absolutely no discussion whatsoever, either with Keir Starmer or any other member of the Labour leadership about that matter.

“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.”