If ever proof were needed that our political system is a pretend democracy, the abysmal performance of today’s select committees should remove any doubt. The lack of any tenacious or forensic questioning on just what people knew and just when they knew it, was startling. Rebecca Brooks apparently very seldom visited the paper she edited and had no idea what happened there. Nobody had any idea why they might be meeting the legal costs of assorted criminals. Nobody asked Brooks straight out exactly how much she knew about payments to coppers.
Most sycophantic of all was Louise Mensch, in her helpful attempts to ask questions revealing that all the News of the World did was the same as the rest of Fleet Street, and it had some good effects, like combating paedophiles. I lost count of mentions of Sara’s Law and paedophiles – no mention of the mob they incited to attack a paediatrician, though. These MPs are so used to asking servile questions at Prime Minister’s Question Time, they don’t seem to realise how they look to the rest of us.
If anybody had any doubt that most MP’s, News International and the top people at the Met are all part of the same corrupt governing political class, the scales must surely have dropped from the eyes now. What a pathetic bunch of parasites.