What is John Bercow's Brexit Clips?

Short videos of UK Commons Speaker John Bercow shouting words like "Order!" and "Unlock!" during the January 2019 Brexit vote, recaptioned on Twitter as reactions to everyday annoyances.

Where did John Bercow's Brexit Clips come from?

They come from the House of Commons broadcast of the January 15th, 2019 vote on Theresa May's Brexit deal, clipped and reshared on Twitter starting January 16th.

What does John Bercow's Brexit Clips mean?

The joke is the mismatch between Bercow's booming parliamentary shouts and the trivial captions users add, turning a Brexit procedural moment into a reaction template.

How do you use John Bercow's Brexit Clips?

People typically post the raw Bercow shout clip on Twitter with a first-person caption about a small daily frustration that fits the intensity of his "Order!" or "Unlock!".

Is John Bercow's Brexit Clips still popular?

The format peaked in mid-January 2019 alongside the Brexit vote coverage and was revisited when The Guardian ran a retrospective on Bercow's Commons outbursts.

John Bercow's Brexit Clips

2019viral videoclassic

Published September 2, 2026

During the January 15th, 2019 Brexit vote in the UK House of Commons, Speaker John Bercow's booming cries of "Order!" and "Unlock!" went viral on Twitter, spawning a wave of out-of-context caption jokes that turned a procedural parliamentary moment into one of the most shared Brexit memes.

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Overview

John Bercow's Brexit Clips are short video snippets of the then Speaker of the House of Commons bellowing single words, most famously "Order!" and "Unlock!", during rowdy Commons proceedings tied to the January 2019 Brexit vote3. Twitter users stripped the shouts of their parliamentary context and paired them with mundane captions about queues, food orders and everyday frustrations, letting Bercow's theatrical delivery carry the joke1.

The format is dead simple: take the raw Commons footage of Bercow shouting, and overlay a first-person scenario that matches the intensity, such as impatiently pressing a car key fob or arguing with a flatmate about takeaway1. The humor came from the mismatch between the constitutional weight of the moment and the pettiness of the caption, which is why The Guardian later grouped the clips with Bercow's decade of "order" outbursts as a source of "light relief in Brexit chaos"2.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

UK Parliament broadcast / Twitter (viral spread)

Creator

John Bercow; popularized by Twitter users including @mrjoshz and @TommyWTF1

Date

2019

On January 15th, 2019, MPs voted 432 to 202 to reject Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit withdrawal deal, and during the noisy exchanges Speaker John Bercow repeatedly tried to call the chamber back to order with a drawn-out, high-volume "Order!"3. A separate moment in the same session saw him shout "Unlock!" as MPs moved through the division lobbies3.

The origin clip that took off was a Twitter video of the "Order!" moment posted on January 16th, 20194. Within hours, users were reposting the raw footage with their own captions attached rather than sharing the BBC or Parliament broadcast directly3.

How It Spread

The caption format broke out first on Twitter. On January 16th, 2019, user @mrjoshz paired the "Order!" clip with a joke that racked up more than 12,000 retweets and 44,000 likes, becoming one of the earliest big hits in the format5. A tweet from @WelshGasDoc using the same clip picked up more than 370 retweets and 1,400 likes6.

The "Unlock!" variant spread on the same track. User @TommyWTF1 posted the "Unlock!" clip with a caption joke that gained more than 2,400 retweets and 8,600 likes, while @ScotCuthbertson's take drew roughly 40 retweets and 260 likes7 8. Further out-of-context edits kept coming through the rest of the week from accounts riffing on the same two shouts9 10.

Twitter's own Moments team packaged the jokes into curated event pages, and The Guardian published a video retrospective on January 17th, 2019 framing Bercow's shouts as comic relief for a European audience watching Brexit unfold2 3. Know Your Meme documented the clips shortly after as "John Bercow's Brexit Clips"3.

How to Use This Meme

The template typically pairs the raw Commons video of Bercow shouting "Order!" or "Unlock!" with a short first-person caption describing a small, everyday frustration that matches the volume, such as waiting behind an indecisive customer or shouting at a phone that won't read a thumbprint1. The caption goes in the tweet text, the clip stays untouched, and the joke lands on the gap between Bercow's parliamentary gravity and the trivial scenario2.