IT WAS a terrible spectacle to behold as MPs turned on one of their own. With nowhere to hide, Speaker Michael Martin meekly countered the hostility with the gibberish of a condemned man.

Wounded and hunted down he was finally finished off, harassed into resignation, by the pack of ne’er-do-wells baying at his heels.

The gusto was distasteful in which the leader of this slavering pack, Tory Douglas Carswell, pursued his quarry. Mr Carswell, so full of voracious indignation, focused on to Mr Martin the despair of the electorate concerning the MPs’ expenses fiasco.

Excuse me for asking, but why was the Speaker scapegoated when all MPs were held to account over... well, their accounts?

While the nation awaits green shoots in the economy, the greenhouse atmosphere of the Commons needs fumigating. Perhaps Mr Carswell sees himself as that fumigator.

After all on his website it states: “He makes jam, and recently took up gardening, sharing an organic vegetable patch with various slugs and snails.” We all know how they can ruin the appearance of well fed and expensive vegetables.

MPs certainly get jam today while everyone else must wait for jam tomorrow. I suspect though, that should a Tory government wrest control from the sticky mitts of New Labour, it will be a case of no jam for the poor, rather: “Let them eat cake.”

But don’t feel too sorry for Speaker Martin, because his pensions – yes, more than one – are gold plated. His annual Speaker’s pension alone is £40,000 after only eight years in the job and a peerage likely too.

Buzzing mad like angry bees around MPs honey pots, the electorate prepares to fumigate Parliament from the hustings.

T Scaife, Manor Drive, York.