Farage to challenge Speaker Bercow

In breaking news, the Daily Telegraph has just broken the story that John Bercow MP - Speaker of the House of Commons - will be challenged at the next election by the leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage MEP.

This creates a very interesting dynamic in the seat. Nigel Farage is the European Parliamentarian for the region that incorporates Bercow's seat of Buckingham. Buckingham is one of the safest Tory seats in the country, with Bercow defending a majority of about 18,000. However, this now becomes an interesting race for three reasons:
1) Farage will run to the right of Bercow, who is not widely liked for his shift leftwards on a number of policy issues, and is also disliked by many Conservatives because he actively wooed the Labour Party to get himself elected Speaker (while most Tories voted against him).
2) Bercow has been tainted by the expenses scandal, and more recently was lambasted by the papers for spending an enormous amount of money to upgrade the Speaker's flat in the Palace of Westminster. This could give Farage an opportunity to attack him (although UKIP is hardly clean as a whistle either).
3) The tactical voting for other parties will be very interesting. By convention the major parties do not stand against the Speaker, so the other parties vote (more than 40% in 2005) could go almost anywhere.

The average Tory is highly Eurosceptic. A lot of them are drawn towards UKIP but often blanch from voting for them in General Election as they see it as a wasted vote. Now almost anything could happen.

Update: Over on Conservative Home there appears to be a very lively debate - with a surprisingly large number of posters saying they'd switch to UKIP.