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The term of abuse – affectionate as it is – doesn't really fit an angry, vindictive, manipulative, secretive, power-abusing, Tammany Hall tribalist who has presided over this catastrophic collapse in the reputation of Parliament.
"I'm in a bad mood today!" he growled at the House, and that was the truth. Red-faced and finger jabbing. We saw the side of him he must take pains to conceal.
Kate Hoey raised a point of order to question the wisdom of calling in the Metropolitan Police on the expenses leak (the subject of his Statement). The Met was busy solving real crimes, she said, and as the media revelations had carefully withheld details of passwords, bank details and phone numbers (the basis of Martin's security argument), wasn't it a waste of resources to...
But he was out of his seat, overriding her, shutting her up. "I've listened to her on Sky News," he started and launched into the sort of lost-rag speech MPs normally mock with high-pitched up-and-down nursery school calls. Impassioned? He was furious. "Face throbbing like an angry haemorrhoid" as it was once said of him.
Then the freedom of information campaigner Norman Baker stood up. He said an early release of the rest of the data would stop the current disaster going on week after week. Very sensible suggestion. He got the thick end of it too. Baker's problem was he was "keen to say to the press whatever the press wanted to hear". Gasps in court.
If other MPs said these things the Speaker would have had to intervene and call for decorum. But he himself was out of control. In terms of Speakerly convention, the man was raving.
Maybe he's most angry with himself. No, stupid idea. But he is the very man responsible. It's him. No other individual could have stopped the abuses, ordered the Fees Office to enforce the rules. He could have. He alone could have ordered the laundry washed in private and left office with a reformed expenses culture behind him.
Instead ... We all know the instead.
His solution – "an Operational Assurance Unit" – is the worst sort of bureaucratic complication. A privatised Fees Office that will end up stooging for the political class.
Cameron's solution is the best. Just put every expense claim online and the problem will solve itself.
We don't need people with an honours degree in accountancy, just people with a degree of honour. Failing that, a degree of shame would do perfectly well.
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Page Summary
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sobatai : Once again... [+0] - hodgeey : Dissolve Parliament [+0]
- bowesy : loss of faith and lack of ability [+0]
- wearesmiling : Tammany Hall tribalist [+0]
- happyf1sh : What rubbish.... [+0]
- kuma2000 : The man was raving! [+0]
- mr_d_a_p : Speaker Going [+0]
- gaius_godd : Viva The Telegraph! [+1]
- john_b_ellis : Apoplectic Speaker. [+0]
- doomsdaybug : martin [+0]
Syndicate
Designed by chasethestars
chasethestars
Comments
Now if that other useless Scot Brown had any morals, ability or sense of right and wrong this perfunctory little prat should be on the first train back to the gorbals. You can see what he is and that is a shop steward and we remember what that lot were like.
His fingers should be rolled in a sheet metal rolling machine just for fun
His fingers should be rolled in a sheet metal rolling machine just for fun
Her should resign ASAP
No one forces the public to get 110% LTV mortgages.
Every time someone shifts the blame the errors will keep happening.
The next speaker will have the pleasure of controlling what would appear to next Tory government in waiting.
The Speaker has failed dismally and should resign, if he had any honour. His expenses are a disgrace. Travelling by liveried car to watch a football match is the thing I will remember most about this petty minded, cantakerous man who should never have been elected to this important position. He is deficient in both gravitas and politesse, not to mention integrity, all vital ingredients in a Speaker.
Michael Martin shares the combination of arrogance and condescension sadly all too prevalent among those with power and/or influence in modern Britain, of which the parliamentary expenses scandal is just another symptom. In the Commons, MPs like Kate Hoey, Norman Baker and John Mann are the ones, not just with a finger on the pulse of public opinion, but, more significantly, who simply know what the public feels entitled to expect from those who hold elected office. Michael Martin isn't the first working class Labour MP to be intoxicated by the subtle fragrance of power and status to the point when privilege and vainglory start to obscure all else. I thought George Thomas was another, not least when he too became Speaker, though he was never tested to the extent that Speaker Martin has been.
I'd like to think that a change of Speaker would help resolve the overall problem, and it'd be a start. But I think we need something more drastic than that to tackle the sickness of our political system and the voter disillusion that flows from it. Breaking the Tory - Labour duopoly and backing the Lib Dems with their agenda of electoral reform might achieve it, but will the electorate do it? I suspect the likely outcome of all this parliamentary fracas will be even greater support for the "Don't Vote - It Only Encourages Them" party, while the two big parties continue to trumpet "decisive mandates" on an ever declining turn-out.
How about turning Westminster into a museum, establishing a new legislature in somewhere nice and central like Derby, with an "in the round" chamber, without the absurd and infantile Oxbridge college debating society ethos of the Commons? I don't think I've ever felt so pessimistic about the working of our system - and I can remember every government since Eden's!