Who’s to blame for the Paterson fiasco?

So, how did No. 10, the whips office and the Leader of the House get the Paterson situation so wrong? As I say in the Times this morning, experienced parliamentarians had warned that a Tory-only attempt to change the rules would fail. Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers, had suggested a week ago that a Speaker’s Commission could be asked to look at changes to the way the standards committee operated. This would have ensured that things were done on a cross-party basis; and with the Speaker in the chair, no party would have had a majority. But this advice was ignored. One government source complains that ‘the chief whip just thought he could bulldoze it through’.

Even as the result came through it was clear that the whole plan was in trouble, after all only 250 Tory MPs had voted for it.