COMMONS speaker and Essex University graduate John Bercow has risked the wrath of senior Tories by speaking out against US President Donald Trump's planned visit to the House. 

Mr Bercow, who graduated with a first-class honours degree in 1985, told MPs yesterday: "We value our relationship with the United States.

"However, as far as this place is concerned I feel very strongly that our opposition to racism and to sexism and our support for equality before the law and an independent judiciary are hugely important considerations in the House of Commons.

"Before the imposition of the migrant ban, I would myself have been strongly opposed to an address by President Trump in Westminster Hall.

"After the imposition of the migrant ban by President Trump I am even more strongly opposed to an address by President Trump in Westminster Hall."

This morning, he has faced critiscism from a number of MPs, for using the speaker's position to voice political opinion. 

Crispin Blunt, the Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, said: "He has no idea whether he will be speaking for a majority of the House of Commons, and this is why speakers do not express their opinion.

"That's the entire point, otherwise they can't remain neutral and above the political fray."

Tory MP Nadhim Zahawi warned Mr Bercow has opened himself up to being labelled a hypoctite after the speaker invited Chinese president Xi Jinping to Parliament despite MPs' opposition to his olicy on Tibet and the emir of Kuwait which bans British dual nationals of Israeli origin, to speak in Parliament.

He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "I think it is, in my book, unwise and he opens himself up to the accusation of hypocrisy, that's my point

"I just think it's unwise on the Queen's Sapphire Jubilee to take a political position so blatantly against the elected leader of our closest ally when we are urging them, as I was last week - I am against the travel ban, especially for banning refugees from Syria who are desperate, who have been vetted - but it's unwise to ban the legitimately elected president of the United States of America, our closest ally when we're trying to urge them not to shoot from the hip, not to ban people, to exercise restraint, look at evidence.

"Yet we are now, or at least the Speaker of Parliament, who has a big, big responsibility, is now sort of talking the language of bans."

Born on January 19 1963, the son of a Jewish taxi driver, Mr Bercow went to school in Margaret Thatcher's Finchley constituency and first got involved as politics as a teenager.

He attended Essex University, where he gained a reputation as something of a firebrand, and became a member of the hard-line Tory Monday Club, notorious for its "hang Nelson Mandela" slogans, joining its Immigration and Repatriation Committee.

At the age of 20 he left the pressure group, saying some of its members' views about immigration were "unpalatable".

After a short spell at Hambros Bank, Mr Bercow embarked on a career as a lobbyist, serving as a councillor in Lambeth, south London, at the same time.

At the 1992 general election he stood unsuccessfully against Labour's Dawn Primarolo in Bristol South.

Three years later he went into politics full-time, becoming special adviser to chief secretary to the treasury Jonathan Aitken until his resignation, and then to heritage secretary Virginia Bottomley.

Mr Bercow finally secured a berth in the safe seat of Buckingham, and - despite Labour's landslide victory - entered Parliament at the 1997 general election.

He was made shadow chief secretary when Iain Duncan Smith became Tory leader in 2001 before quitting the Conservative front bench in November 2002.