And a warm welcome back to Tory Sleaze...

MEPs on the take! (Pope Catholic!) MPs fiddling expenses and enabling their sons to hold “Fuck Off I’m Rich” parties on the taxpayer’s tab! Lord Ashcroft of Belize buying up marginal seats! Half the Shadow Cabinet deriving unearned income from propping up Mugabe! Couldn’t be better, one might have thought. OK, the present lot may be nothing to write home about, but just because the others haven’t had their bums on the seats for 11 years, we’ve no need to forget that they’re all wannabe fat-cats with a boundless sense of entitlement.

Only trouble is, it’s pretty hard to bring that argument to bear. Ever since the horrible Mandelson said that “New Labour are fairly relaxed about people getting filthy rich” prior to being a bit less relaxed about the filthy rich pricing him and his boyfriend out of chi-chi houses in Notting Hill, it’s been pretty clear that New Labour are every bit as bad. What I’d rather hoped is that, on his accession to power, the dour son of the Presbyterian manse had gathered the Parliamentary Labour Party around him and said:

“Right, lads and lasses, this is where the party stops. An MP earns around £60k a year. Bear in mind that that’s at least double what most of those you represent are earning, but don’t forget either that it doesn’t go very far here in the Smoke. Yes, there’s a glamorous world out there that you may feel you want to be part of. Sorry, but it’s not going to happen. That’s the deal. From now on you eat in greasy spoons, or the odd Indian or Chinese. Generally speaking, you don’t set foot in the Congestion Charge Zone unless you’re on parliamentary business. Anyone seen in a place of entertainment where the drinks cost more than £5 a time will receive a good kicking from the Whips. Tell your significant others they can forget about the existence of Harrods and Harvey Nicks. And if you don’t like that, don’t like the idea that the people’s elected representatives should be debarred from the fun bits of their own capital city, then perhaps you might give a thought to how the rest of the electorate feels about it.”

And then we'd be able to pick the greedy, sleazy Tories off, one by one, to great electoral advantage, as no-one likes corrupt, complacent fat-cats. Chance wasted, all for a few directorships and the odd night at Annabel's.