I am puzzled that there should be a supposition among many people – not least Labour supporters who fear a general election – that the Tories have done well out of the expenses scandal. I am hard put to agree. None of the main parties comes out of this well, and the only ones that can make a pretence of doing so are the Lib Dems. They also, in the shape of Vince Cable, have one of the handful of people regarded as honest in the House of Commons: all of which, incidentally, might prove to have some bearing on the outcome of next week's local and Euro elections.
In public regard, it seems to me, the Tories are as contemptible as Labour in the whole scandal. If anything, in fact, they are worse. There are three-fifths the number of Tory MPs as there are Labour, yet the party of opposition seems to be matching the party of Government stroke-for-stroke in this particular game. And that in turn has reawoken memories of the 1990s, when the Tory Party seemed to have cornered the market in financial sleaze, and became a byword for turpitude. It was not the least of the reasons why Tony "Whiter than White" Blair was elected so crushingly in 1997.
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