Thursday, 4 November 2021

Government by Panic

The Parliamentary Standards Committee recommended that the House of Commons suspend Conservative MP Owen Paterson for 30 days for a number of 'cash for questions' offences outlined by the Standards Commissioner.

Maybe the Prime Minister was worried that the Parliamentary Standards Committee might unearth more unpalatable truths about his fellow Tories.

So he panicked, whipping his MPs to vote against the motion - normally approved unanimously - to suspend Paterson. 13 of them voted in favour of the motion to suspend, i.e.  against the Government and 38 (shamefully - do you not care about this important issue?) abstained. A Minister was sacked.

Today the government reversed its stance and promised a repeat of the suspension vote. The Minister was un-sacked.

Later Owen Paterson resigned as an MP. So there will no longer be a re-vote.

Could the government have handled this any worse?

2 comments:

  1. Could a few more Tory MPs discover their moral backbone?

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  2. I try to be factually accurate in my blog so I have a correction: Angela Richardson, MP for Guildford, was not "sacked as a Minister". She is a PPS at the Department For Education, an unpaid flunky rather than a Minister, and is now back in that role. Given that she was sacked for defying a three line whip, which is exactly what she did, it is baffling that (a) she was reinstated and (b) she was prepared to continue working for a regime which had summarily fired her. It means the government will always have your back when it makes a U Turn.

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