The new Speaker must drop this flummery
On one level he is the fall guy of the expenses scandal. But on another, some see Michael Martin as the agent of his own undoing.
Look no further than the absurd scenes enacted yesterday as he processed through the Palace of Westminster. Did anyone ever think of cutting that frock coat so that some flunky didn’t have to trail along behind carrying it?
The truth is that what he wears and how he carries himself is very much in the hands of the Speaker himself. Why did Mr Martin feel the need to dress up with this lot? Why can a decent man not simply wear a suit and walk to his Speaker’s chair and get on with the job.
It would seem to suggest an acute lack of confidence that somebody behaving so normally could get away with doing the job. But in truth it seems that the “British way” is to have some vast mace carried ahead to see off attack, and to have a trail of officials strutting along in his wake.
Many of these are people who have seen service in war – one Black Rod saw action in the Iraq war. Why on earth do they have to be reduced to this?
Symbolically this will be the first test of the new Speaker. What will he or she do with this flummery? As Gary Gibbon has reported, Margaret Beckett is the hot favourite as Labour ranks show every sign of staying tribal and using their majority to vote for their own.
Ms Becket is no radical, but neither does she stand on ceremony. Hopefully, if she does win on Monday, she will have none of this pantomime, for that, if you watch the footage, is what we have.
Only a place that could sustain the flummery, class stratification, deference and absurdity exemplified by the Speaker’s procession could have come up with the expenses racket that has so seriously undermined it.
Incidentally, Westminster is so bashful about the absurdity enshrined in the Speaker’s procession that it is often impossible for us to film it. They refuse us permission, and we have to grab the shots on amateur cameras like tourists. Yesterday was an exception because Mr Martin himself wanted it filmed “for posterity”.