Simon Carr: A different world, with very different rules

Sketch

We didn't have the right tumbrils and there was a shortage of ordure to fling, but the scene of humiliation was unmissable. We gathered early to queue for the 30 seats reserved for tricoteuses inside the magistrate's court.

The wretches arrived. It was possible to feel sorry for them, they being three lost-looking men, well into later middle age and well outside their natural habitat. Doleful and embarrassed, they generated an air of pathos. Elliot Morley, David Chaytor, and also Jim Devine, red-faced and distressed, as though he'd had a full cavity search and they'd found his second home.

Until recently they had been in the gilded political elite, our governors. For all the satire they attract as a class, an MP expects to be treated as the most important person in the room. And here they were, paraded for the execration of their inferiors.

Inside the court we saw the first instrument of punishment: the dock. This is a tall glass cage, with a door and a lock. The panels are ten feet tall with an open top. "Someone did once climb over and escaped out," the gentleman on the door told us. There was going to be a plea before the magistrate for the accused not to have to sit in that cage, like criminals. That wouldn't be right, the dock is for little people.

Their lawyers had been bringing in boxes of documents on sack trucks. Why so much and so many? "We get paid by the pound," one of the lawyers said with the driest of smiles.

The magistrate came in and everyone stood up, even us in the media. It's a different world all right, in court. The defence applied for his clients to sit in the body of the court and the magistrate looked down with polite curiosity to say: "Why not?" And having heard the reason he quietly and easily but with great finality told us that normal rules would apply.

The three men who had been turned from seats to stand behind them, were then ushered into the glass cage, the door was shut behind them, and it locked. They were in the system now.

They were told to stand. The charges were read out, again and again.

"That you furnished information dishonestly and with intent to cause loss to another... False and deceptive in a material particular... Misleading, false, deceptive, dishonest..."

Politicians reply to inconvenient questions with answers like: "The real point at issue is here is..." Or "I'll take no lectures from the counsel opposite..." The charges gave no room for manoeuvre; they were implacable.

You can see why parliamentarians want to judged by Parliament. Never mind the separation of powers, or privilege, or Article 9 of the Bill of Rights – the world outside just doesn't understand how politics works.

Yesterday saw the MPs' verdict on a husband and wife team in the Commons. Alan and Ann Keen had claimed £36,000 a year on their "main home" – which was boarded up. They were asked to pay back just £1,500. Why? Because their colleagues understood that they hadn't intended to make any personal gain from the claims.

Only parliamentarians can understand how other parliamentarians work.

If it weren't for proper judges, we would eventually have tumbrils.

simoncarr@sketch.sc