One day after MPs called for him to go, Michael Martin made history by announcing his resignation. In doing so, he has surprised many people, including myself, and he has shown a remarkable level of honour and perception.
Michael Martin could easily have clung on. By common agreement, the major parties never put up candidates to contest the Speaker’s seat, so he could have carried on drawing his MP’s salary and expenses long after the last of his critics had fallen by the way side. Instead, he has chosen to begin to turn the tide of public trust. Martin is not Poseidon, and does not rule the waves. But neither is he Canute. His example will put pressure on other MPs to face reality and either announce that they are standing down at the election — as Douglas Hogg has done — or stand down right away, as some surely should do.
As I said right at the beginning of this crisis, as long as MPs pretend that all are equally guilty, the question of trust cannot be resolved. Some MPs have done nothing wrong. Even if they claimed for expenses that the public might not like, they did so entirely within the rules and without any profit to themselves. Some of them have been ridiculed or lambasted in the press. This is simply unfair and wrong. Instead of calling ‘shame on you’, we, the public, should perhaps be saying ‘shame on us’. But other MPs have clearly played the system to leave them with money in their pockets at the end of the day. Even if this was within the rules, it is clearly wrong. The point of expenses is that they reimburse, not that they enrich. Some MPs who will coincidentally become richer as a result of the way property prices have changed have announced that they will return any profits to the taxpayer. This is honourable. But those who ‘flipped’ their second homes, or bought dilapidated properties, did them up at the taxpayer’s expense, and then sold them on at a profit, must not be allowed to get away with simply paying the money back. Even if it was within the letter of the rules, they knew that what they were doing was far, far removed from anything that could be justified to the electorate. They should never have been able to justify it to their own consciences. And there have been MPs who have engaged in behaviour which bears all the hallmarks of fraud against the taxpayer.
Just as Michael Martin has taken the honourable route and left, MPs who have played the system, or who have claimed dishonestly, should resign their seats now. Just as MPs seemed unanimous in calling for the Speaker to go, they should now — if they have done such things — be willing to go themselves.
MPs who have claimed extravagantly — for swimming pools, tennis courts, moats, and so-on, need to examine themselves. Douglas Hogg is at one end of the scale — whether or not his claim was within the rules, the ownership of a moat is an extravagance that the public should never have been required to fund. At the other extreme are MPs who have simply bought needed items at a higher price than most of us would be willing to pay. Who should decide their fate? The answer, of course, is the electorate. Those who recognise that they really cannot justify their actions can take Hogg’s route. Those who believe that they can will have the opportunity to do so at the General Election.
But before we have a General Election, I believe firmly that we should have a Special Election — a single day on which all of the by-elections triggered by MPs taking the honourable route — the Michael Martin route — and resigning their seats are fought. Contesting all of these on one day would be cathartic for Britain. In my view, it is a necessary and essential step in the process of restoring the public trust without which there is simply no democracy, only a kleptocracy — government by thieves.
