That three-hour debate on Damian Green really was a waste of time. A poll of MPs shows 30 want Michael Martin to go, but how many say that to in the chamber? Nada. We have some honesty from Douglas Carswell and Bob Marshall-Andrews and that’s about it. Some rebellion. All they were left with was innuendo. Dennis MacShane saying that sergeants don’t fall on their swords, officers do. Wink, wink. And that was about as tough as it got. So this pointless committee of grandees will go off, boycotted by the Tories and the LibDems, to report after Green has been cleared.
And report on what? We know pretty much what happened. The police arrested Green for bureaucratic reasons: if they wanted a warrant, they’d have to get one from into what was Bow St Magistrates’ Court – a process which would have demanded a higher burden of proof than they would have been able to deliver. In attempting a shortcut – the arrest – they blundered their way into a constitutional quagmire. The Tories played this perfectly, milked it for ten days, seized back the news agenda after the PBR. Yet as far as polls show, very few in the country care very much at all.
Martin won’t go. He should: he claimed full responsibility for his staff, and then said they made a monumental error. So why isn’t he offski? There is a reason that Brown wants him to stay. He was elected unopposed at the last general election as are all Speakers, so he’d have to give up his seat if he resigned. And the last thing Brown wants is another Glasgow by-election so there was a blast of “full confidence” from No10.
This farrago has shown Ming’s ambition to be Speaker, though. He wheeled our suspicious knowledge of the precedents of Speaker’s resigning and his amendment (to let the committee set up its own remit and timetable) was defeated by only four votes.
Just as the Green arrest was an allegory for how state power has grown to an outrageously unacceptable degree, today’s debate was a sorry reminder of how this institution is woefully unable to police itself no matter how much hot air it produces.
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