The faults in the Tory party were on show for all to see today, as MPs were forced to debate No 10’s efforts to block Owen Paterson’s suspension from the Commons. Ministers had hoped to quietly u-turn on their efforts to overhaul the standards system but following Sir Chris Chope’s last minute intervention, a very public debate played out in public today.
Members on both sides of the aisle queued up to savage the government’s handling of the case. Shadow Commons leader Thangham Debbonaire attacked the ‘total absence of leadership we have seen from this sorry government over this sorry affair’ while her SNP counterpart Pete Wishart noted how ‘public trust’ in Boris Johnson was ‘at an all time low’ with Tory MPs facing inboxes ‘swamped with furious constituents.’
And it was from those same Tory benches that the most stinging criticism of the government was made.
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