Ferrets in a sack

Yep, it's a massive clusterfuck:

The man tipped to become the new Metropolitan police commissioner was last night understood to be considering whether he should apply for the job, after a barrage of criticism from politicians on all sides over the arrest of the Conservative shadow Home Office minister Damian Green.

I read somewhere that this job was "his to lose". Looks like he's lost it. If he goes in under this cloud, he's going to be as popular as a pork chop in a mosque.

But that's not all!

Some ministers voiced unease on the margins of a cabinet meeting in Leeds on Friday. They believe the police behaviour was heavy-handed and gave the impression that the state was attempting to block the opposition from holding the government to account. Other ministers said the police had good grounds to question Green.

Can we have the names of these "other ministers", please? Because it soulds like they need to be the first up against the wall come the revolution.

Police allegedly accused the MP of "grooming" the young civil servant, in what was seen as an attempt to prove that Green had broken the law by offering inducements to procure leaked documents.

Grooming? Well, there's a nice neutral word without any unpleasant connotations.

And the rozzers aren't united, either:

Senior officers were split over whether the MP should have been investigated or arrested at all, it emerged yesterday. Some within Scotland Yard viewed the issue as a disciplinary one for the civil service, and not a criminal matter at all.

It almost certainly was not a police matter at all, but how useful for the Home Office if it were to still leaks by raising the spectre of criminal charges for a civil offence.

And there's even more!

There was also a row brewing between the Crown Prosecution Service and the police. The Guardian has been told that the CPS was involved in the decision by Bob Quick, the Met's assistant commissioner of specialist operations, to arrest Green. But the CPS angrily denied it was party to the decision to arrest, saying: "We were involved only in the preliminary stages of the investigation."

And here I think we have reached the endgame of New Labour's approach to politics: "something must be seen to be done". There was no hint of competence in Labour's term in power. Their response to any crisis was not to jack up enforcement of existing laws, it was always to write a new, bad law. And now, we are left with an enormous, dysfunctional, badly-designed state apparatus, where no-one knows their real powers and more importantly, the limits on their powers, so they just make shit up as they go along.

It seems to me that the damage wrought by New Labour far exceeds the headline £1 trillion debt that we're left with. We also have utter incompetence in local and state government, dysfunctional civil services, a quagmire of incomprehensible law, complete corrosion of the relationship between the electorate and their "representatives" and a swollen underclass of people who find it more convenient to suck at the rancid teat of the state than make something of their lives.

God help us all.

Update: Oh dear:

Martin's decision follows Tory claims that he may have been misled by the police. Police were allowed to enter the Commons after reportedly informing Jill Pay, the sergeant at arms, that the director of public prosecutions had sanctioned the arrest of the Conservative MP. This has been denied by the Crown Prosecution Service, which said the DPP, Keir Starmer, had simply been updated by police.

Oh dear. I think Mr Quick could be in big shit if this is the case. (If this were a democracy, of course.)

But I doubt he'll have the decency to resign, and "Tits" is doubtlessly too grateful to him for his useful support over 42 days, so nothing will happen.

Update 2: Denis McShane can't keep himself from slagging off Cameron, but does make an important point:

Instead, we have a mammoth breach in the core democratic doctrine of parliamentary privilege. On Wednesday, when the Commons returns, the Speaker must make clear that never again will the police or any other agent of the state enter into an MP’s offices and seize papers unless there is clear and overwhelming evidence of serious criminal, not political activity.