Well, it appears as if Phil Woolas is on his way out of the door, and I for one am not upset. He is undoubtedly the architect of his own misfortune and really has nobody else to blame; he was ultimately responsible for publishing lies about his opponent and has thereby lost the right to represent the constituency of Oldham. I seriously doubt he will be missed in Westminster, he never struck me as particularly good at his job when he had one and given the alacrity with which Harriet kicked him out of the Labour Party I suspect this view is shared by the party hierarchy.
There does however seem to be a strand of opinion doing the rounds within the hallowed walls that even if it was right that he should go, the method of precipitating his departure was wrong; that judges should not have the power to interfere with the will of the people who elected him. This argument may have some merit were it not for the fact that his lies undoubtedly had influence over the result. If his majority had been huge it might not have mattered but seeing as more people voted for candidates other than Woolas and the winning margin was so small there was a pressing need to rerun the election without the lies and half truths.
Amongst the “great and good” at Westminster there are many who believe themselves to be beyond the laws that govern normal mortals and that in matters such as lying to the electorate or trousering expenses to which they have no right, they should only be answerable inwards to their fellow MPs. As we have seen with the expenses scandal there seems to be a marked reluctance to recognise the anger in the country about the behaviour of Parliamentarians and their seeming inability to come to terms with this anger. It is long past the time when we need to wrest back power from this self serving elite who are in the unique position of being able to write their own rules. They fully understand that with every erosion of their status, with each clawing back of power their ability to run Parliament as a cosy little club for their own benefit is diminished; their self awarded authority stripped away and they do not like this one little bit.
Parliament has no power other than that given to it by the people and it is for the people to determine the extent of that power, to vary it and reduce it as the people see fit and the mechanisms for doing so are the ballot box and the courts. As Cameron takes us towards fixed term Parliaments the need for the courts to have the ability to challenge Parliament and its members increases. When I hear MPs saying that the Courts do not have the right to look into their affairs the red mist descends, of course they have the right, without the courts who would protect the rights of the citizen against the state.
We have had the unedifying farce of Messrs Morley, Chaytor and Devine parading through the courts claiming that the laws as they apply to mortal man do not apply to Parliamentarians and they should not be subject to the normal court processes that apply to us if we have been accused of theft; thankfully this has now been adjudicated upon by the Supreme Court who have rightly decided that they are not above the law and I look forward to their trials with anticipation. I trust that if found guilty, incarceration will immediately follow.
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