Dishonourable Arrogance

Yesterday was an inglorious day.

Since the early 90s under the Tories, and dramatically since Labour came to power in the late 90s, the days of honourable behaviour in public life have long since ebbed away. Perhaps, Lord Carrington in 1982 was the last set piece occasion when it was evident. All those ghastly Tories during the Major years (Hamilton, Treddinick, Smith etc) and almost every Labourite who has tried to stay in office when it was clearly time to go, have demonstrated this point.

We now have a professional political class who cling to power at all costs. Despite the fact that their position is untenable, that they are openly vilified, that they have been publicly disgraced, that they are ridiculed daily in the media, that public opinion is lined up against them, still they try to cling to power, the trappings of office and, most importantly, the big salary that goes with it.

Even the Great Iain Dale has been caught up in the Westminster madness that is the current febrile atmosphere in the political village. In short, Martin is not going anywhere because:

• He wants to keep the big salary for another year (ie until the election)
• Gordy wants Martin around to take the heat and media attention away from him
• Labour MPs will fight to deny as many Labour scalps as possible to the Daily Torygraph
• Dave needs to retain as much discredited Labour shit in place as possible to help him at the polls in 2010
• Tory MPs want to be able to control who the next Speaker will be, which they cannot do until after the next election when they will have a majority

To paraphrase Michael Winner in those ghastly Esure adverts: "Calm down, Dear. It's only a political scandal".