Design Test

Most interested was I in the tale being related in the Telegraph (not the Tele of Dundee fame, of course, this is a lesser paper but a decent organ nonetheless) - a tale of derring-don't as Gordon Brown lays out his plans for a decimation (at least) of Labour's MPs - except the saintly Hazel Blears, of course.

It was this line that gave me pause, though:

Labour’s Chief Whip, the party’s general secretary and constituency parties, will have the power to refer MPs for investigation. Expulsion could then follow.

Leaving aside the unnecessary comma, does this not sound like shades of Salem and the witch trials dramatised in The Crucible?

Are there not, in fact, echoes of regal dictatorship in the creation of the Star Chamber? Echoes of political repression and arbitrary justice, no witnesses, no right of appeal - and was it not the cause of the end of Charles I?

Ach weel, neffer mind