Alex Philips: We need to talk about sleaze in politics

aThe evil of corruption reaches into every corner of the world.

Thus spake one David Cameron, six weeks after the Panama papers scandal revealed hundreds of examples of hidden offshore accounts back in 2016. Who would have thought that Presidents and Prime Ministers could be lured into accumulating vast amounts of personal wealth eh?

Who would imagine that being in such a privileged position with the personal numbers of world leaders and business bigwigs in your phone could generate such lucrative roles post politics?

After all a £160,000 salary is barely enough to refit the 10 Downing Street sitting room, requiring some creative accounting once the 30 grand of taxpayers’ cash has been spent on a two hundred thousand quid do-over.

It’s the sort of financial crisis most of us gawp at, the sums of which easily eclipse the cost of your average roll of lino at B&Q. And it seems when it comes to politics, as night follows day, the next privilege, perk or peccadillo is just around the corner.

In every Premiership comes the scandal that could suddenly doom the fate of the party at the mercy of some rather uncomfortable headlines. Sleaze is always waiting in the wings.

The Owen Paterson affair has brought it all to the fore yet again, with the now resigned MP accused of being paid significant sums of money by private enterprise to further their interests. He would not be the first, and is likely not to be the last unless there is a significant overhaul in limitations smacked down upon MPs.

Why should they be entitled to a host of other jobs and positions when they are already getting 80 thousand pounds to be public servants as well as second homes and transport?

Even that wasn’t enough for them a decade ago when the expenses scandal erupted across the country, with legions of politicians flipping homes, getting duck moats, employing their wives on the public purse and using allowances to afford their nanny.

What a gruesome and murky ordeal it became to the horror of the public, agog at the sheer scale of opportunism and venality with noses in the trough from top to bottom.

A system overhaul was imposed yet again to put politicians back in their place, but it wasn’t long before the Chairman of the Home Select Committee, responsible for leading policy and debate on crime, was caught paying rent boys in cocaine while pretending to repair washing machines. You couldn’t make it up!

Today the self same Keith Vaz wants to reclaim his old seat of Leicester East now that his successor has just narrowly dodged clink. What have the good folk of the city done to deserve such shining examples of probity?

And of course it didn’t stop there with the questionable behaviour of the now ex health secretary giving a new definition to hands, face and space in the corridors of power in the middle of a global pandemic.

Paterson and the rather tragic circumstances surrounding the death of his wife is only the latest in a litany of Ministers and Members falling foul of freedoms most mere mortals aren’t entitled to.

Where there is power and influence, there will always be the corruptible and those trying to corrupt. Yet perhaps it was the staggering response of the government in attempting to overhaul the Parliamentary watchdog rather than consider its verdict that was the most astonishing manoeuvre of all, even prompting John Major whose own government was riddled with cash-for-questions scandals, to accuse the current posse in power of being shameful, wrong and unworthy of this or indeed any government.

Throw into the mire pounds for peerages, deals with developers, ostentatious auctions and donor perks and you realise there is a whole spectrum of potential financial fiddling, innuendo and backroom bonking that politicians and their special friends must navigate without getting caught.

One thing's for certain, things are about to get ugly. Today, we need to talk about sleaze.