Speaking out: a parting swipe

“I didn’t realise how much you liked me so I’ve decided I’m staying.” The Speaker’s words at the end of a nearly two hours of tributes.

But he was only joking.

It was a bizarre session, Michael Martin, who was effectively expelled from the Commons (as a deposed Speaker he has to quit the place and stand down as an MP), the first person to lose their job in the expenses scandal, sat through tribute after tribute from MPs of all parties.

The most difficult one – to deliver and to listen to – must have been Nick Clegg’s. The Liberal Democrat leader had openly called for Speaker Martin to step down.

Mr Clegg said it was “especially generous” of the Speaker to call him in the debate, knowing that he really had no choice in the matter.

But David Cameron and Gordon Brown had both come to the conclusion that the Speaker didn’t have support in the House to continue and it was them that the Speaker swiped on his way out.

Speaker Martin said they should’ve supported HIS proposals for reform in July 2008 which proposed no more claims for household goods under a capped second home allowance and receipts for everything.

It might have taken some of the sting out of the expenses saga if it had passed (146 of the 172 votes that defeated it were Labour MPs – several ministers amongst them), but it’s probably an exaggeration to believe, as the Speaker suggested, that it could’ve changed the course of history.

There was already too much dirty linen in the fees office records which found their way into the Telegraph.