Parliament is not a private members club

Last week twenty or more labour MPs queued up to clap Speaker Michael Martin into the Chamber of the House of Commons. Their support for the Speaker was touching. It demonstrated a form of tribal loyalty not seen much outside the ranks of football supporters and street gangs these days. They clapped and cheered Speaker Martin and he returned their good wishes with winks and nods of appreciation.
It was all so very heartwarming - until you looked beneath the all-for-one, one-for-all mateyness. Greg Dyke once complained that the BBC was hideously white. It might be said of the bulk of Speaker Martin's supporters that they were, uniformly, hideously Scottish; and lowland, working-class Scottish at that. If ever there was a symbol for what ails our country at the moment, it was their clubby little demonstration of fielty. Because they weren't demonstrating loyalty to Parliament, its institutions or history. They were, essentially, trying to protect what is probably the best and most exclusive private members' club in the country.
Oh yes, they made loud noises about the integrity of the House and its essential need to police its own members and activities - as if the involvement of the rest of us begins and ends with shovelling money into the place and electing its inmates.
And yes, they generated a lot of noise, banging on about the ancient sovereignty of Parliament to resist external pressure and interference. But, it was nothing but the clanging of empty vessels; signifying nothing. How could it when most MPs, including Martin's loyal band of brothers, are studiously ignoring the heaviest and most sustained assault our Parliamentary democracy has ever suffered, in the shape of the Treaty of Lisbon?
Even the presence of a couple of thousand protesters demanding a referendum failed to infiltrate their lemming like minds. While the crowds were protesting , their MPs were busy sitting on their hands and allowing the very sovereignty not just of Parliament but of Great Britain to be cededto the EU.
The truth is they circled the wagons around the Speaker:
a. Because he is manifestly one of their ain folk and
b. because they are terrified that, were he forced to stand down, a new Speaker might want to restore some probity and rectitude to the institution of Parliament. And the obvious place to make a start would be in the Augean stables currently labelled MPs allowances.
If, however, they manage to maintain the staus quo and Martin stays in post for the foreseeable future, prospects for MPs of all parties look infinitely brighter. They might concede so many powers to the EU Commission as to turn Parliament into little more than a very ornate rubber stamp. They might so diminish the status of the House of Commons that voting at General Elections takes place in a public phone box but, hey, they get to keep the second home, the secretary/wife/partner allowance, the free travel, Air Miles and all the other freebies AND can can continue nursing the ambition of making it into a much enlarged European Parliament or Commission where, if recent reports are to be believed, the perks and benefits are, by UK standards, super-sized.