Better MPs, please…

As we all know Her Majesty’s Armed Forces have spent the last seven years fighting in far-flung parts of the world. Their deployments have hardly been uncontroversial. So you’d think that the release of a new Green Paper on the “way forward” for the armed forces might be a moment of some interest and, indeed, even at this stage of the electoral cycle, some importance.

Not so. At least it doesn’t interest our parliamentarians. As Think Defence points out only one in twenty MPs bothered turn up to listen to and debate the Green Paper. I think that’s a grand total of six Labour MPs on the governmentback-benches. I assume most of them are members of the Defence Select Committee which would mean that it’s possible that not a single Labour MP who ain’t on that committee bothered to turn up for this…

If parliament is scorned or despised then this isn’t just a consequence of the expenses scandal, it’s also because the distance between MPs who bleat about restoring honour and integrity to Westminster and their own actions is so vast.