A Tale Of Two Harmans

On the 8th of February 2010, Harriet Harman, in reference to the three Labour MPs accused of fiddling their accounts, said:

"The criminal law applies to MPs just the same as it does to everyone else."

On the 3rd of July 2009, only half a year ago, the same Harriet Harman was driving whilst using her mobile phone and became involved in a car accident. When a witness approached her, the law-abiding MP Harriet wound down the window of her car and cawed:

"I'm Harriet Harman - you know where you can get hold of me."

Harman's hypocrisy is spectacular. On the 3rd of July 2009, Harman broke two laws (driving using a mobile phone and driving away from the scene of an accident without exchanging insurance details) and considered herself to be so important as to be above the law - the very law that she now insists that MPs do not seek to override with "parliamentary privilege" - by fleeing the scene of her illegalities.

Harman was forced into this hypocritical, self-contradictory uttering because she had to act to pre-empt her own leader's ponderous inability to discipline three Labour MPs the moment that news of their fudging of their accounts came into common currency.

Gordon Brown had been outmanoeuvred by David Cameron who argued that the three MPs in question (Jim Devine, David Chaytor and Elliot Morley) should not be permitted to claim parliamentary privilege (part of the 1689 Bill of Rights) to exonerate themselves. Harman stepped in to compensate her leader's ponderousness and save him from Cameron's attack by asserting that Labour's tricky trio will not be above the law.

In doing so, she has announced herself, even more so than usual, a glib liar - for evidence only a mere seven months old ("I'm Harriet Harman...") proves that Harman's attitude is that Labour MPs can pick-and-choose if the law applies to them.