Mr Michael Martin

A peerage! It seems that the last speaker to be forced from office, boss-eyed Sir John Trevor in 1693, was one of those who did not get a peerage following his fall from grace, and nor should Martin. Lord Martin of Milnburn or wherever it will be should never happen. It is an affront. We all know there are people who should never have been placed in the Upper House, having failed at their elected job or even run away from re-election, but Martin has been thoroughly disgraced in the process too.

Now, don't get me wrong, this is not snobbery, George Thomas was a man from a similar background and to me thoroughly deserved the last hereditary ranking peerage to be given to a former Speaker (even though it was pretty unlikely anyone was going to inherit it anyway). But at a time also when we need desperately to change both houses of parliament (or abolish both as I would have it) this is no time to be simply patting people on the back and kicking them "upstairs".

Not one member of the commons apparently dissented from the motion that Speaker Martin should be elevated. If they are so concerned about tradition and face that they cannot see that this is one occasion in which that tradition ought not to be honoured, given the extraordinary events that have led to this, none of them deserve to wipe their arses on that green leather benching.

Tagged with

political corruption, house of lords, elect the lords, constitutional reform

Comments

At about 08:38 on 02 Jul 2009 Matthew Huntbach wrote...

My feeling is that the man has been punished enough by being "the first Speaker forced from office since 1693", and he doesn't deserve further punishment. The convention is that an ex-Speaker goes to the Lords.

Speaker Martin was mediocre at his job, though I've heard he did better at less public-facing aspects of it. But there isn't one thing you can say was a massive scandal which forced his resignation, it was rather just a drip-drip of not doing it well, and it's on those grounds I say there shouldn't be the further punishment of denial of the traditional peerage. If someone is kicked out of a job just because they weren't really up to it and not because they deliberately did something wrong to benefit themselves, the general practice is to be kind to them afterwards rather than vindictive.

To some extent his forcing out was a sort of tokenistic gesture to try an appease the general public over the expenses scandal. I can see why he was bitter over that.

Future practice should be that the Commons feels more free to replace a Speaker who doesn't seem up to the job once there. To enable this, it would again be a good idea not to get too vindictive over Speaker Martin's removal. If you make it easier for people to leave jobs they aren't good at, even at the expense of a certain amount of humbug, there is less chance of the problem of someone staying on rather than doing the decent thing and no-one else having the heart to push them out either.

About Jock

Name: Jock Coats

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