Some jobs aren’t worth going for. If the call were to come inviting me to become coach of the New Zealand rugby team with a huge salary and a palatial dwelling thrown in I would decline. Not just because I have no interest in the game but because I know I’d be rubbish at the job. It’s always a good idea not to apply for jobs that are going to make you look stupid. One could go further and say that the smart thing is to avoid a career that will make you look like a bumbling, pompous, grasping fool on national TV.

If only someone had told Michael Martin this. One of his friends is reported as saying that “Michael consciously set out to be in pole position to be Speaker.” Instead he decided that the perfect culmination of a Labour Movement career was to dress up in pseudo Jacobean flummery and chair sessions of the House of Commons. The job comes with a free house, the right to employ family members and stick your arm in for as much public money as you can when claiming expenses. Martin’s alleged defence of this is the battle cry of every contemptible careerist bureaucrat sipping champagne at the members’ expense: “I have been a trade unionist all my life. I did not come into politics not to take what is owed to me”.

People like Martin personify everything that is rotten in British Labourism. In their world view what is good for them is good for the workers. If that involves getting their partner’s dry rot treated with public money or selling out a strike it’s all in the game. What makes Martin especially contemptible is his profound fawning admiration for the arcane ceremonial of Westminster which has sucked the backbone and radicalism of virtually everyone who has walked through its doors.

The result of this is that in the upcoming European elections Labour is falling back on the argument that if you don’t vote for people just like Hazel Blears and Michael Martin the BNP will get elected. What an utterly dismal choice!