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Is coup brewing over Mr Speaker Bercow? No.

To be sure the Speaker has enemies, and he has well-publicised clashes with them, sometimes in the Chamber. But short of a "no confidence" vote, there is no mechanism for unseating him before the vote which will be held after the next election. More than that, there's no appetite in the government to organise or even acquiesce to any such vote before then.

Ministers are mostly resolved to endure the occasional irritations which follow from having an unusually high-profile figure in the Chair. And Mr Bercow's critics will doubtless continue to invent disobliging terms with which to describe him. But I don't get a sense of anything coming to a boil, however hard they try.

And meanwhile, he continues to proceed with a considerable reform agenda - discussed at some length in a speech to the ultra-wonkish think-tank, the . He suggested that there should be more questions to ministers in the chamber, and fewer written questions, noting that most of those were devised not by MPs but by their researchers.

He questioned the value of big, unfocused, set-piece debates on general subjects like "foreign affairs" and he queried the effectiveness of the Commons current system of "line by line" scrutiny of legislation. He noted the improved performance of the select committee system under its elected chairs, lavishing considerable praise on Treasury Committee Chair Andrew Tyrie. And he pointed to his own role in speeding up question time, so more MPs had a chance to put their points to ministers, and in allowing more urgent questions - many more than his predecessor.

There's no question that Speaker Bercow has made the Commons a better, more effective institution. So why don't MPs love him? He attracts a startling degree of loathing from many Conservatives, partly because of his ideological journey from uber-Thatcherite to borderline social democrat, and partly because he is accused of toadying to Labour to get the speakership. (It is, of course, unheard of for MPs to manoeuvre for office...)

Some have criticised him over the performance of IPSA, the MPs' hated expenses watchdog, noting that the Speaker's Committee on IPSA has not met for ages. But that committee exists solely to rubber-stamp the appointment of the top IPSA-ites - it was never intended to be a supervisory board, because the whole point of having IPSA was that it was not controlled by MPs.

And then there are the personal clashes. Simon Burns, Patrick McLoughlin, and most recently Mark Pritchard.

A couple of these were recorded for posterity on TV, but where they were not, I think it is always wise to take third-hand accounts with a pinch of salt - there is a tendency towards embroidery and dramatisation in the retelling. But Mr Speaker does seem to be getting into scrapes with unfortunate regularity. I'm not sure what he should, or can, do about the personal enmities he has built up but there must be a limit to the quantity of baggage he can comfortably haul around.

As for the policy stuff - a Speaker who goes out into the world and gives regular speeches is bound to stray into controversy a bit - it's pretty unavoidable, particularly when taking questions. On Tuesday, Mr Bercow expressed some reservations about cutting the number of MPs, while maintaining the number of government ministers - thus tilting the balance of Parliament a little towards the executive. It may be controversial - but it does relate to the functioning of the Commons, and Mr Bercow carefully phrased his comments. He said he would be "concerned" if the relationship between Parliament and government was "skewed". His conversion to opposing hunting - revealed in a letter to a constituent - smacks more of cock-up than conspiracy, but does upset Conservatives, who're mostly, but not exclusively pro-hunting.

An interesting question is quite how many MPs would convict Mr Speaker of the charges on that bill of indictment, and replace him with someone else. Doubtless there are plenty, but I hear tales of a dinner for new Conservative MPs at an eatery in Horseferry Road, around the corner from Parliament, where plenty of the diners were delighted that they had a real chance of being called at Question Time and in debates, because the Speaker was forcing the pace.

And remember, Mr Bercow ran for the speakership, and won, as a radical Commons reformer. His removal could presage a clampdown on the Commons current "Prague Spring". In the Q&A after his IfG speech, he quipped that he doubted the party whips had been holding street parties to celebrate the democratisation of the select committees and the creation of the Backbench Business Committee (he had warm words for its chair, Labour's Natascha Engel). The removal of this Speaker could open the way for the watering down of reforms that the government is beginning to find a real irritant.

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