Boris has other things on his mind

An interesting snippet from Rosa Prince who reports that Boris Johnson

was summoned to appear before the Commons Home Affairs Committee today, but failed to show.
The Committee is trying to get to the bottom of the Damian Green affair and while MPs didn't get particularly far with Jacqui and David Normington last week, they clearly hoped they would have better luck with the Mayor.

and says that its chair Keith Vaz is disappointed

with the response from the Mayor given his public expression of concern at the time of the arrest.

Here here but maybe he had other matters to attend to

Tomorrow's fish and chip paper

Mike Smithson is a little unhappy about the governments controling of the use agenda today with the big story being the moves to force retailers to hide their displays of tobacco

For a demonstration of the power of the government to control the news agenda just look at today’s development with the planned ban on tobacco product displays in shops.
This is a relatively minor move that won’t come in for corner shops until 2013 - yet look at how much coverage this has attracted. There’s a bit of controversy there and its something else to go on the bulletins.
Meanwhile the Damian Green story will be tomorrow’s fish and chip paper.

Sunday round up of Martin and Green (Oh and Boris and Gordon)

The Sunday Times story that the speaker may be considering staying on for a third term will surely fill some MP's with horror

The paper says that

The revelation – through his official spokeswoman – will be greeted with incredulity by many backbenchers, who had assumed he would step down at the end of this parliament. Although his critics acknowledge that he is determined not to be forced out, they hoped that he would retire quietly when the country went to the polls.

But perhaps of more interest is the news broken by the News of the World that

TORY MP Damian Green and his Home Office mole will NOT be charged in the leak scandal, the News of the World can reveal.
Prosecutors say papers seized from Mr Green’s Commons office cannot be used as evidence in a trial.
They add that cops FAILED to conduct a proper search in Westminster.
The conclusions, in a secret early review by the Crown Prosecution Service, coincide with the initial findings of an independent police probe.

It seems though that Boris Johnson may be about to embroiled in the mess

A formal complaint about Boris Johnson's involvement in the controversial Scotland Yard raid on the Houses of Parliament could lead to his suspension or removal as Mayor of London. He is accused of 'potentially corrupting' the Metropolitan Police investigation into leaks from the Home Office, which led to the arrest of the shadow immigration minister, Damian Green reports the Observer

Meanwhile http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1092580/Moles-row-deepens-Cabinet-traitor-Tory-bid-prove-Brown-guilty-sleaze.html reports that

The row over Westminster moles took an extraordinary turn last night after it was revealed that two senior Labour figures – including a Cabinet Minister – are behind a Conservative attempt to prove that Gordon Brown is guilty of sleaze.
The Tories have written to the Prime Minister claiming that the two prominent Labour politicians told them that Mr Brown broke the law by using a charity to bankroll his campaign to replace Tony Blair.

1st Labour MP calls for Martin to go

I see that we now have a Labour MP to come out against the speaker.

The maverick Bob Marshall-Andrews,speaking on the Today programme this morning has said that Michael Martin has lost the confidence of the Commons following the Damien Green affair.

He is the Labour MP to call publicly for the Speaker to go.Two Tories have already called for Martin's head and later today,Lib Dem MP Colin Breed said

"there is a growing body of opinion that feels he’s beginning to lose the consent of Parliament."

whilst stopping short of calling for his resignation.

Expect much more speculation in the Sunday's

Surely not a socialist plot

As usual Simon Heffer doesn't mince his words this morning in the Telegraph.

After a week which has seen the speaker under pressure over the Green arrest and then passing the buck to his Sergeant in arms and the leader of the Commons being asked five times to give him a vote of confidence,Heffer believes that it all comes down to the speaker's shunning of tradition

This is what Mr Heffer has to say

his conduct in the past 10 days since the police raided Damian Green's office has been disgusting even by his standards. In an age when people are cynical in the extreme about politicians, he has shown us there is still plenty more scope to be appalled by them

adding that

The important point about Mr Martin is that, first, he broke with tradition by giving someone plainly agreeable to him the post of Serjeant-at-Arms; and, second, that when something that should have been his responsibility went horribly wrong, he chose in the most undignified fashion to blame her.

Furthermore it is all Labour's fault in abandoning the traditions of the House

there is a deeper problem. It is Labour's (and I include Mr Martin in that group) lack of regard for history, and for the liberties hard-won throughout the past few hundred years.

Michael Martin off the hook,but the Met certainly aren't

It seems remarkable that the Sergeant in Arms,Jill Kay the Commons is not aware of the regulations surrounding the circumstances in which the police can enter the House.

The arrest of Damien Green clearly was not one and as Michael Martin skillfully passed the buck earlier today as he let the House know that it was Jill who authorised the search.

The speaker has granted a debate on the matter for next Monday and attention will swiftly pass to the police who failed to get a warrant to search the MP's private office and probably went well over the top in the whole matter.

Meanwhile the Prime Minister is sitting firmly on the fence refusing to commit to the question of the police until the inquiry of the seven wise men is over.

The speaker at the end of all this has come away if not entirely unscathed then at least living to fight another day.His seemed as angry as the Tory benches over the issue.

Although I note that Iain Dale thinks not

The granting of a debate on the issue on Monday and the creation of a Committee of Seven Wise MPs may buy Speaker Martin time. But he is a broken man, both politically and personally. One could almost feel the sympathy MPs felt for him. No one was willing to stick the boot in. But surely even his doughtiest defender would admit that his status and credibility is now terminally damaged.

That video in full.

This is the much previewed video of the search of Damien Green's office along with a diatribe form Tory shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve courtesy of Web Cameron

Not a great deal to watch but should be an exciting day as the House reconvenes tomorrow

How the Damien Green affair show its the police that are out of control

The comment writers this morning are still mulling over the Damien Greeb events.

According to Rachael Slyvester in the Times

The Government has lost control of the flow of information. The pursuit of Damian Green was the wrong way to stem it

and continues

this case is not just about the constitutional role of the Opposition. It also reveals a more general concern at the highest level in the Civil Service about how the workings of government are being revealed. As interesting as the questions about the behaviour of the police towards Mr Green is why the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, Sir David Normington, and his boss, the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, decided to set the boys in blue on the boy in blue.

Philip Stevens in the FT goes a little further

The police are out of control. So is the government. We can only conjecture as to what possessed the senior officers who raided the homes and parliamentary office of Damian Green, the Conservative immigration spokesman. Yet their disdain for political process spoke eloquently to the authoritarian culture of our times

For Stephen Glover

One of the most disturbing developments in Britain over the past 30 years has been the loss of confidence which many ordinary law-abiding citizens have in our police.

The arrest of Damien Green he says falls into this catagory

Even Labour MPs are disturbed that Mr Green's Commons office and home should have been searched as a result of a few innocent leaks to the media of the sort that Gordon Brown used to specialise in when he was in Opposition. This really is the Stasi state in action - the police acting on behalf of the regime against its perceived 'enemies'.

For Steven Richards

In order to understand why Damian Green was arrested with such spectacular insensitivity, take a look at how the next Chief of the Metropolitan Police will be appointed

and reminds us that

the next Chief will also be able to take decisions without political masters getting overtly involved.

Green arrest a constitutional crisis?

That is at least according to Iain Martin in this morning's Telegraph

This entire episode is quite chilling and the implications of his arrest in connection with information he gathered from a whistleblower (information which was true) are horrendous for parliamentary authority. The encroachment of the Executive and the police on the business of an MP going about his business, who was working to put legitimate information in the public domain, is seriously sinister.

Perhaps taking this incident a little too far but he continues

And it's all the fault of the EU

This type of outrage is what happens when parliament gives away its powers to external authorities - the Executive and the EU - and comes to regard itself as unimportant

hmmmmmm

There is going to be plenty of fallout from the Damien Green arrest

The arrest of the Tory front bencher Damian Green would have not doubt dominated the front pages this morning were it not for the tragic events in Mumbai

David Cameron is said to be livid at the action of the police who according to Fraser Nelson arrested Green who

has for some time had a whistleblower in the Home Office, which resulted in four stories ending up in the newspapers

and is suspected of

“Suspicion of conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office, and aiding and abetting counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office.”

These are the stories that he is suspected of whistleblowing to the Press(again courtesy of Fraser Nelson

February 2008 – Illegal immigrant found cleaning the Commons with a fake identity pass

February 2008 – Details of a secret blacklist of Labour MPs suspected of plotting to defeat Gordon Brown’s flagship terror reforms which had
been drawn up by the party’s whips

September 2008 A leaked memo from Jacqui Smith to the PM running through the consequences of the economic downturn on crime

As John Craig points out at Boulton and Co

Here at Westminster, Tory MPs claim Damian is a hero for exposing Labour blunders and cover-ups. Labour MPs, on the other hand, say that even if there is a suspicion that he's a villain he can't remain as a shadow Home Office minister.

David Cameron is standing by him though and according to the Independent

is expected to raise questions about the way the case was handled in an early-morning address before the media today.

Meanwhile according to the BBC

Damian Green denied any wrongdoing and said: "I was astonished to have spent more than nine hours today under arrest for doing my job."