Realpolitik for cowards and confidence tricksters

This Legg business is a constitutional outrage says Iain Martin and he is quite right. It is.

Ah, me... MPs are squealing: 'Injustice!'

Right Honourable and Honourable Ladies and Gentlemen, I have my fingers in my ears.

This is summary justice, rough justice, and some of you think you are being penalised unfairly.

Not my problem. After all, it is happening because you willed it.

You hired Sir Thomas. You gave him carte blanche in the hope that he would play by your time-honoured rules but he has chosen not to do so. He has chosen, instead, to do what you, yourselves, should have done years ago.

Very well, then. Let us speak of justice and injustice.

Where was justice in the confidence tricks perpetrated against me over many years by so many Members of Parliament, until you were found out?

For years, you and your colleagues treated me unfairly. All of you, Rt Hon. and Hon. colleagues in the House of Commons in which you all have equal responsibility for the actions - and inactions - of the House. Was this justice?

Those of you not personally guilty of abusing my trust and your position by taking money from me to which you were not entitled, are accessories to the offences of those who did.

You, who committed no grave sins of commission, are guilty of grave sins of omission.

You did nothing to stop your fellow MP's from abusing me, a citizen who has so much less money and so many fewer privileges than you whom I and my fellows sent to Parliament to defend us from the overmighty and the wicked.

• You made me subsidise MPs' luxury to a grotesque degree, to my own impoverishment
• You abused my trust
• You debased my Parliament
• If you did not do these things personally you condoned them in others by your silence.

By your silence, or worse, you denied me justice. You did not care as long as I paid, and paid again and kept you and your colleagues in unwonted luxury. You perpetrated a vast confidence trick on me and my fellow citizens. You, the makers of the laws I must obey in the name of justice, denied me justice.

The boot is now on the other foot. You are crying 'Injustice!' - and I do not care.

You are in the stocks. You, so used to the silken privileges of the powerful, are receiving rough justice on behalf of millions of angry and abused citizens.

Too few of you realise that you have brought this upon yourselves by your actions, by your inaction or by your silence. And that you all - ALL - have some way to go to make amends.

So in place of justice (as I freely admit) we are now having retribution instead. Crude, isn't it? Forgive me if on this occasion I take a less than sophisticated attitude, or even smile at your discomfort. I'm only human.

Pay up. Shut up.

Then reflect upon what you have done to our Parliament by, at the very least neglecting your responsibility over the long term, and in the short term by placing an unelected official in authority over yourselves who should have remained sovereign as the House of Commons - and discharged your responsibilities.

You are cowards. You panicked. Our disreputable, despicable Prime Minister - a notorious proven coward - panicked in the face of public outrage and like sheep you allowed him to lead you into yet further disaster.

You agreed that Mr Brown, on your behalf, should hire Sir Thomas Legg to do to you what you should have done but failed to do for yourselves.

Live with it.

You get no pity from me.