The monster that devours anyone who speaks out

This extraordinary six-year-old quango has the power to sack any locally-elected representative it likes, quite independent of what those tiresome people, the voters, might wish. Last week, it disbarred Eleanor Pinfold, former leader of the opposition on Sutton council, for "brash and offensive language." Goodness me - whatever can she have said?

Well, it turns out she upset the borough's police commander, Superintendent Warren Shadbolt, by referring to him simply by his surname. Unconscionable! Ms Pinfold also accused Shadbolt - er, sorry, Warren - of being a Liberal Democrat who didn't take complaints from Tories seriously. Worst of all, she accused Sutton of corruption, something the Board ruled "brought the council into disrepute".

There are three problems here. First, police chiefs need to be thicker skinned. Second, there was an incident of corruption in Sutton council at the time. Earlier this year, after a sting by The Sun, an official got nine months for pocketing money.

Third, it seems that nobody did take complaints seriously. Councillor Pinfold claimed she alerted the council to the corruption a year before The Sun forced them to act.

If that is true, the council deserves to be brought into disrepute. Even if it's untrue, it is surely miles within the boundaries of acceptable political discourse. Democracy dies if elected representatives cannot accuse any public official of failing.

That may be what the Standards Board wants. Pinfold is only the latest in a series of outrageous decisions whose effect has been to terrify councillors about making accusations of inadequate performance. Decisions mostly stemming from complaints by council officers - the very people supposed to serve councillors, not censor them to protect their official backsides.

In London's biggest scandal of the moment, the vanishing grants paid to friends of the Mayor's aide Lee Jasper, leaked emails have been key evidence for this newspaper's reporting. Last week I learned that some of those emails have been in the hands of two London Assembly members for months. Why didn't they alert the public? Perhaps they were worried they'd be "Standards Boarded".

The fact is, politicians sometimes have to be "brash," and, yes, even "offensive" - because, inconceivable as it is to the sensitive flowers on the Standards Board, offensive things sometimes happen in public life. Things that have to be exposed, not brushed away with everyone forced to be nice to each other.

Britain already had a Standards Board to punish misbehaviour. It was called the electorate. And that, not this pernicious quango, is where accountability should lie.