Newsnight 28-May-09

I have just watched the first 20 mins of Newsnight, and it is well worth a watch on iPlayer if you missed it like I did. See it here.

Kelvin MacKenzie, Danny Finkelstein and Susan Kramer talking with Paxo about the Telegraphs revelations - and then, slap bang in the middle Bill Cash phones in to talk about how he flipped his arraignments to help his daughter pay for her wedding - justifying it as within the rules at the time and at no additional cost to what he could have claimed.

So, two observations.

Firstly, I am really sad about the Bill Cash revelation as I genuinely thought he was one of the good guys; despite what I interpret and misappropriation of taxpayers money, he has worked long and hard for transparency in government, the supremacy of Parliament and highlighting the affects of legislation handed down from the EU. When I put up a poll last week about who should be new speaker I included Mr Cash so that I had someone on the list I wanted to vote for... What a fool I feel now. He is not Mr Cameron's favourite backbencher, so I suspect he will get the push, and soon.

Secondly, the crux of the early part of the BBC exchange was that the Daily Telegraph is acting in the roll of Judge & Jury and that paradoxically this through this analogy it was leading to mob rule and disproportion between cases.

It is true that there are people with transgressions (and cases of out-right theft) that have not yet lost their jobs or faced prosecution. To that I would say that I think the BBC analogy is wrong; the DT to me is the Prosecuting Barrister making the case, the public are the Jury and it is the absence of a recognised Judge in the matter that is causing disparity and disproportion. Take the analogy further, the Judge should serve to control the hearing and pass sentence proportionally - to do so as per law, not per emotional stirrings for individual cases. The absence of a judge in the analogy means that the Jury and the victims are deciding the case and proposing their own sentencing.

In short, Parliament should have been the Judge, but it has failed. We needed the Government, or Gordon Brown himself to step into that breech when this began to come to light but he has, predictably, flunked it. It has been passed off to committee. This is why David Cameron is coming off quite well in the public light, because he is acting as Judge for Conservative MPs and he is getting it right.

The only way to fix this and end me making court analogies is to hold a General Election. Only Gordon Brown stands in the way of that happening.