Michael Martin is trying to turn criticisms of his performance as House of Commons Speaker into a class war, says Rachel Sylvester in The Daily Telegraph. However, the criticisms of Martin are actually nothing to do with the fact that he is the son of a single mother from a Glasgow tenement, but rather that he is “not up to scratch”.
“Quite”, says The Guardian. Firstly he is “pretty poor” at his job – no one who has seen him in action could agree that he is a “very, very good Speaker”, as Gordon Brown claims. The second problem is his personal expenses, “which are large, probably excessive, have been badly managed and are not as public as they should be”. Yet for all the air miles, “eye-popping” taxi expenses and £17,000 claimed for a house without a mortgage, he doesn’t appear to have broken the rules.
Maybe not, says Sylvester, but it is hard to see how a man whose office gave misleading answers about taxi receipts can, “with any credibility“, conduct a review of MPs’ allowances. There is no question that the rules governing MPs’ expenses and allowances should be tightened and policed more effectively, but Martin is not the man for the job.
Whether he should also step aside as Speaker is a different matter. “It would do Parliament no good for its most senior layman to be hounded from office,“ says The Independent. Far better for Martin to announce his intention to stand down at the next election. His background may yet save him, says Sylvester, because many in the Labour Party are still “class warriors at heart”.
However, this is dangerous territory. “Voters couldn’t care less whether their politicians bashed metal in Glasgow or played the wall game at Eton”; they want them to help improve their lives. Martin once said, “My origins should be no reason for me being elected, nor should my origins be a reason to debar me.” Eight years on, “his origins should not be a reason for him to be protected from his own failings”.