The Speaker of the House of Commons has dismissed speculation that he will not be re-elected to the chair at the start of the next parliament.
At a press lunch in Westminster yesterday John Bercow said those who talk of removing him are "people who mutter and chunter and twitter and whitter and blog and gossip".
He added: "They are entitled to their views."
Bercow said he will actively campaign in his Buckingham constituency at the next election.
He said that he had been given assurances that the three main parties will not field candidates against him.
Bercow is being challenged for the seat by UKIP MEP Nigel Farage.
He said he would campaign on the basis of his 13 years service as MP and his remit to reform the Commons.
Mr Speaker's wife Sally attended the lunch. She is standing as a Labour candidate for Westminster council at the local elections in May.
Bercow rejected criticism of his wife for giving an interview in which she criticised Conservative leader David Cameron.
He said the attacks on his Mrs Bercow are "old-fashioned, cowardly and downmarket".
"The obligation of impartiality applies to the Speaker of the House of Commons," he said.
"My wife is not my chattel. She is independent and entitled to her views."
Yesterday's event was the first time a Speaker has addressed a press gallery lunch, and he praised the role of the press.
"You lot, it is implied, are less the fourth estate than a fifth column, an enemy within at the Palace of Westminster," Bercow said.
"At its most hardline, those who hold this view assert that the press are a cancer on the parliamentary body politic and that the House authorities should do everything practical to make your working conditions as miserable as possible.
"This is emphatically not my outlook. I do not think you are a cancer on the House of Commons – a nasty little rash from time to time maybe, but never a cancer - and it should instead be our ambition to make it easier for you to fulfill your role, not harder."
Bercow said he wants to fight the sense that "the chamber of the House of Commons is in decline, even dying".
"I am attempting to bring the chamber back to the centre stage by conducting business more efficiently, by making it clear to ministers that they should be making statements in the House of Commons first and that they will be compelled to do so if they err in this respect, and by employing more urgent questions – I have allowed 16 so far - so that the House is talking about the sorts of issues which the rest of the country is debating," he said.
The Speaker said he will continue to be a "cheerleader for change that will strengthen the backbench MP as an individual political actor, reinforce the combined authority of backbenchers through a more rigorous select committee system and embrace reforms which will enhance the legislature as a whole against the executive".
"My aim, frankly, is to create a House of Commons which the media must monitor."
