Father of the House Sir Peter Bottomley tore into Andrea Leadsom’s Standards Procedure amendment during the Commons debate this afternoon, confirming that he won’t be voting for it on the grounds that it would be inappropriate to “change a process […] mid-game”:

“I refer to the debate in 2010, when Jack Straw was the Justice Secretary when Sir George Young, as he then was, contributed for my party, and I contributed as well. We chose the system we’re now using. If we want to consider changing [the system] we should do it in a proper way, I don’t regard this as appropriate now.”

A pretty fair assessment. MPs chose the current rules, and those rules maintain the Standards Committee’s independence. Not a single MP Guido has talked things it is a good idea to do this in these circumstances. It’s not a good look to have MPs arbitrarily decide to interfere with that when it suits them, particularly to favour an individual MP.