John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, has announced that he will stand down, both from his position and as an MP.

In a speech to the House of Commons on Monday afternoon, Mr Bercow said that if Parliament voted for an early election, he would stand down as speaker once Parliament broke up for the campaigning period.

Otherwise, he continued, his last day as speaker would be October 31, the day Britain is currently set to leave the European Union.

If there was no election before then, he stressed the need for an "experienced figure" to chair debates in the house leading up to that deadline.

Mr Bercow, the first Jewish speaker of the House of Commons, has served in the role since 2009. In his speech he said that he had promised his wife and children after the 2017 election that he would not stay in the role beyond the next election.

By tradition, the Speaker, who is chosen from among MPs, renounces their parliamentary party when assuming the position, adopting a stance of strict neutrality – and none of the main parties then put up a challenger to contest their seat in general elections.

However, Mr Bercow’s announcement came a day after a government minister, Angela Leadsom, said the Conservative party would field a candidate to stand against Mr Bercow at the next election, angered by what it viewed as his partiality.

In an address to the Sara conference on antisemitism and misogyny last November, Mr Bercow told the audience that he had “always been very open about my Jewishness and I have experienced antisemitism in my life”, but that his experiences “dwindled into complete insignificance and nothingness in comparison with what female Jews have experienced and do experience."

He also described how his late father had always told him not to hide his origins.

“I remember dad, who died a very very long time ago saying to me - 'Son I don't mind at all whether you choose to be a practising Jew in adulthood - but I hope in this free open pluralist and democratic society you will never seek to hide your origins.”

Mr Bercow has served as MP for Buckingham since 1997.