'the public are scenting blood', I wrote a week ago, 'and demanding it'. Douglas Hogg will stand down at the next election (I don't know if he has done a deal to become Lord Hogg of the Moat) and now the Speaker has said he will go on 21st June, the first to be slung out of office since 1695. As Voltaire observed of the execution of Admiral Byng, it is good to kill a Speaker from time to time, in order to encourage the others.
There's something about popular uprising. It starts off as an unalloyed good thing: 'A bas les aristos' is the popular talk, wrongs are righted and the balance of society gets fairer. But the problem is the public never nows when to stop. Suddenly the leaders of the revolt are perceived as not being tough enough and it's 'à la lanterne' everyone who is suspected of wavering.
I wonder how we will look back on this time: 'Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven' ? (sorry about the french leitmotiv) Certainly a wrong is being righted and certainly a few of the sinners will be for the chop, but is it going to get silly? 'They're all just in it for themselves, let's get rid of the lot of them', you can hear it in pubs and on radio 'phone-ins.
The first sign of silliness is that Esther Rantzen is thinking of standing. Perhaps we should mark this point as where the nonsense is beginning and leave the overpaid self-publicising old trout to advertising for ambulance chasing solicitors.
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