Speaker of the House of Commons (United Kingdom) and 2005. At the 2010 general election, Speaker John Bercow faced ten opponents, including Nigel Farage, former leader of UKIP, who obtained 17.4% of the vote, and John Stevens, from the Buckinghamshire Campaign for Democracy party, who obtained 21.4%. Bercow won with 47% of the vote. The Speaker's primary function is to preside over the House of Commons. Traditionally, the Speaker when presiding wore court dress—a black coat with white shirt and bands, beneath a black gown, with stockings and buckled shoes, and a full-bottomed wig. But in 1992 Betty Boothroyd, the first female Speaker, eschewed the wig. Her successor,
Resignation from the British House of Commons and re-enacted in modified form by the Succession to the Crown Act 1707 (also called the Place Act), an MP who accepted an office of profit under the Crown was obliged to leave his post, it being feared that his independence would be compromised if he were in the King's pay. The prohibition was on a sitting MP accepting an office of profit under the Crown, but it did not disqualify someone already holding such an office from being elected to the House of Commons. As a result, this meant a ministerial by-election when any MP became a government minister,