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,
Speaker of the House of Commons (United Kingdom) speakership was part of the process of making the Commons a more cohesive, defined and effective instrument of the king's government. Throughout the medieval and early modern period, every speaker was an MP for a county, reflecting the implicit situation that such shire representatives were of greater standing in the house than the more numerous burgess MPs. Although evidence is almost non-existent, it has been surmised that any vote was by count of head, but by the same token perhaps the fact so very little is said about actual votes suggests that most decisions, at least of a general kind,