ITN said a few minutes ago that Michael Martin, the Speaker of the House, was “a dead man walking.”
See here his full statement, including these lines:
“I would like to make a statement on members’ allowances. We all know that it is the tradition of this House that the Speaker speaks to the whole House. But in doing so, please allow me to say to the men and women of the United Kingdom that we have let you down very badly indeed. We must all accept the blame and, to the extent that I have contributed to the situation, I am profoundly sorry.”
The reactions of his peers were brutal:
Norman Baker, Lib Dem: (Mr Martin) “completely blew it….He signed his own political death warrant. I give him less than a week.”
Gordon Prentice, Labour: “My own prediction is that Speaker Martin will be going by the end of the week. His position is untenable.”
Paul Flynn, Labour: “It’s like showing the red card to the referee – it hasn’t happened for 300 years but I feel like it’s got to happen now… We’ve got a dead Speaker walking at the moment.”
The Tory leader, David Cameron proposed a national petition calling for a General Election.
“I think the scale of the problems facing Britain – the recession, the debt crisis and above all the political crisis – all point in one direction. I think there is now only one way of sorting out the mess and that is for Parliament to be dissolved and for there to be an immediate General Election. The political crisis has been caused by politicians, so I don’t think the politicians alone can solve it. The public must be involved.”
And Sir William Rees-Mogg, my favorite columnist from the London Times, wrote today an excellent article that includes these smart paragraphs:
“Whatever they may be saying in public, almost all Members of Parliament hate having been humiliated and hate the press for it. The present mood of the House of Commons resembles the mood of Germany after the Treaty of Versailles; MPs resent the press at least as much as the public resent the greed of MPs…
In my view, there also needs to be a new prime minister, moving rapidly to the election of a new House of Commons. Gordon Brown has been too slow to grasp this problem; David Cameron has been much more decisive. The Labour Party should change its leader. But more than that will be necessary to regain public confidence. This is a major scandal, by any standards. There should be a general election this autumn. It might even help to save some Labour seats that might be lost in the following year. The public have to be convinced that Britain is being governed by an honest Parliament.”
Illustration by Quinton Winter (quintonwinter.com)