The Speaker of the House of Commons seems to have blotted his copybook. His fumbling attempt to shield Blair from answering a question that is difficult for both him and the Labour Party looks partisan.
It is, of course, a distinctly British conceit that a Speaker, taken from the ranks of people who have spent an entire career being professionally partisan, should become impartial in his new office. I can think of no other political system that rests so much and so often on the notion that gentlemen and women can be expected to do the proper thing.