After Hoey attack, motion of no confidence in Speaker Martin is a 'no brainer'
Yesterday Nick Robinson summated the Commons’ expenses debacle with salience and brevity, by announcing that the notion of the ‘honourable member’ is dead. Ironically, the man charged with upholding propriety within the chamber, Speaker Michael Martin, chose to launch an extraordinary, barely penetrable attack against one of the members whose honour and dignity remain intact, Kate Hoey. Rarely can the Guardian’s sketch writer, Simon Hoggart, have been presented with more apposite material. This morning he has gratefully transcribed Martin’s venomous assault on Hoey, as well as providing a sardonic synopsis of what the speaker’s initial statement should have consisted of. Martin, as Hoggart suggests, has presided over the expenses’ fiasco, for which he should assume a large degree of responsibility. And as lamentable as his defensive response to the Daily Telegraph’s revelations might have been, his retort to the MP for Vauxhall, who suggested that the Metropolitan Police has mor...