Graft

The news that three former cabinet ministers have been using their political influence and contacts to line their pockets will, I am afraid, come as little surprise to most people. The media are having difficulty whipping up public reaction; we plod wearily along muttering 'more of the same'. Perhaps we shoud abandon our puritan conscience and be more like the Italians, thinking 'nice work if you can get it'. But the British are not like that.

In my view MPs should be paid sufficiently well that they don't need to do this sort of thing (there will always be one or two bad apples but not the almost industrial levels of graft we have at the moment). Of course the public is unlikely to tolerate a pay rise until the stables are cleaned out and we appear still to be some way away from that. It may be with so many new faces after the election some confidence returns but I rather doubt it.

If I were an 18 year old voting for the first time I would feel there was nobody to express my concerns. And this is very bad for our democracy.

One of the odd things is how Mr Byers, the main offender, was stupid enough to fall for this. The name of the lobbying company was Anderson Perry, an inversion of Perry Anderson, Marxist authour of the laugh-a-page 'Lineages of the Absolutist State', which Byers will have read. Then to sit in front of a complete stranger and describe himself as 'like a cab for hire' defies belief. It is beyond Mr Cameron's 'it shows they have been in power for too long'. Such a dunderhead shouldn't have been in power at all. His defence appears to be that it's OK, he was lying. Great. Trying to obtain a pecuniary advantage by deception, but not sleazy.

Mr Brown was foolish to say he was satisfied nothing untoward had occurred. If, as Mr Byers said, he has done this for other clients, it follows that some government minister has been suborned.

Of course there must be a full investigation.

This has not been a good fortnight for Mr Brown. The public is confronted with sleazy socialists asking for £5,000 a day, there is an unpopular budget coming up tomorrow, and to cap it all Samantha Cameron is pregnant, a vote winner if ever I saw one.