ImageDamian Green must be **** a hoop. His name's more widely known today than it's ever been. Any ambitious backbencher will now want to become famous by receiving leaks.

Boris was told of the arrest beforehand and expressed "trenchant" concerns about it.

The Mayor finds it hard to believe that on the day when terrorist have gone on the rampage in India that anti terror police in Britain have apparently targeted an elected representative of Parliament for no greater crime than allegedly receiving leaked documents.

Why are the police are prioritising their resources on abusing our civil liberties? The acting head of the Metropolitan Police Service has shown himself unfit for high office.

As The Times Red Box blog points out, we have seen heavy handed police action before against a receiver of information in the case of journalist Sally Murrer, championed by Private Eye and by Nick Cohen in the Guardian.

Bad though the Murrer case is, the action against Damian Green is infinitely worse because he is an MP - and an opposition MP. The police arrested him and searched his house and his Commons office. Raedwald's blog asks about the official who allowed them in - apparently a Mrs Jill Pay, the current Sergeant At Arms. Doubtless she is now persona non grata with MPs, and with the Speaker, an incompetent man faced with a dispute he will not welcome. We need a Speaker who is a clear thinker on the limited but important range of questions he has to cover. Which this man is not.

It will also be important to focus on the exact wording of disclaimers about what the government didn't know. The police may not have told ministers directly, but they may have briefed officials. When they say they did not tell ministers that the arrest was going to happen, are they implying that no one in government knew the general line of enquiries, and that police were using the old common law?

It's inconceivable that the CPS would find it in the public interest to prosecute Damian Green. The police would know this. They arrested a Member of Parliament, kept him for nine hours, and searched his records, in order to facilitate an investigation where a junior official had apparently already been identified. There was no reason to think they could ever bring the MP to trial. Are they going to start fingering journalists too?

Jill Pay may be doomed. The acting head of the Metropolitan Police should certainly go.

All the denials by government and the police will have been written by lawyers, and should be dissected in that light.

Update - Douglas Carswell thinks the Speaker sanctioned the search in the Commons.

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