The Speaker

Thank goodness he’s gone quietly. 

The problem I had with the speaker was not that he blocked expenses reform. Let me make that very clear; that was the responsibility of all elected members, and especially the Government, who failed to act over a long period of time, and that is very much the subject for another post.

The reason Michael Martin had to go, which was apparent immediately at the time I heard it in the “Today in Parliament” pod-cast, was that he took sides. He abused the position of speaker to silence his critics, and even worse to abuse them publicly. I am not a fan or Kate Hoey, nor of Norman Baker; they seemed hypercritical of the speaker at the time, and someone other than the speaker should have been there to defend him. As it was, he chose to intervene himself, and and thus to sign his own death warrant.

I wrote to my MP (Meg Hillier, “Ms ID Cards“) to request that she vote in favour of any no-confidence motion that came before the house, after his disgusting abuse of his position of power during that debate. Luckily for our constitution, it didn’t come to that. 

What this doesn’t mean.

This certainly doesn’t mean that the expenses row is over. This was, in fact, nothing to do with the expenses row, except perhaps indirectly. MP’s abuse of this shoddy system of reimbursement remains a real problem, and if Local Parties aren’t willing to deselect their local candidates (and if they had any insight into electoral maths then they damn well would!) then the leaders must act decisively to sack such members, forcing by-elections with new candidates. This is especially true for front bench members whose claims breached the rules, or much more reasonably were simply unconscionable.

What we don’t need is opportunistic Tory posturing for a General Election. The country shouldn’t do things it will later regret in a hot temper! Waiting until the autumn for the Kelly report, and additional reform of the electoral system (STV at the very least, PR if possible) is the sensible thing to do. All we will get now from a General Ballot would be a bunch of extremists and independents, and probably a slim Tory majority (Thatcher-ism for everyone just as the recession was starting to recover – aaargh!).