Traditionally, the House of Lords was seen as the political equivalent of an old people's home, a place where troublemakers, eccentrics and crooks were put out to pasture. However, these days even peers are expected to maintain certain standards, as Lord Sewel has learned to his cost. The peer has had to resign days after becoming embroiled in a sex and drugs scandal. The Sun on Sunday revealed footage of the former Labour minister enjoying a "seedy romp" at his flat in Pimlico's Dolphin Square.
Of course, this was no "ordinary" romp with the pictures showing him snorting a substance thought to be cocaine with two prostitutes, cavorting in a bejewelled orange bra, and making both sexist and racist slurs. He also found time to reveal his feelings about some of the UK's most senior politicians, including David Cameron ("the most facile, superficial prime minister there's ever been"), Jeremy Corbyn ("a typical romantic idiot") and Alex Salmond (a "silly pompous prat").
The almost too-perfect irony of it all, of course, is that until the tabloid expos, Sewel chaired the House of Lords' Privileges and Conduct Committee. This £84,500-a-year job involved him ensuring that members adhere to the Lords' Code of Conduct. Indeed, last year he helped to introduce new rules allowing members to resign, retire or be expelled for wrongdoing. "Scandals make good headlines," he wrote in a blog for the Huffington Post earlier this month, adding that the Lords had taken "major steps" to "protect its reputation and punish misconducts by its members".
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As well as the loss of his voting rights and salary, the former minister will now face a criminal investigation into alleged drug taking. His only consolation is that he will still be allowed to keep his title. There has inevitably been an avalanche of condemnation from both sides of the political spectrum. "He has wounded the reputation of the upper chamber," thunders The Times; The Guardian's Suzanne Moore condemns "his sense of utter entitlement both to the bodies of women, and to the public money... to pay for them".
His behaviour was outrageous, of course, and the man deserved to go. But there's a sneaking admiration from more than a few pundits Grace Dent in The Independent is unsure "whether to be appalled or to applaud" his "two-fingers attitude to what the world expects nearly 70' to look like". And as Brendan O'Neill says in The Spectator, Sewel's demise is a "full-on, drugged-up, peer-and-prostitutes scandal, of the kind Britain used to be pretty good at before the square Blairites and cautious Cameroons took over".
There's also more than a whiff of hypocrisy. Campaigners are using the scandal to put the case for reforming the Lords, as if that would prevent future scandals like this. In any case, I'd rather put up with the occasional Sewel if it avoided the gridlock and chaos of an elected second chamber.
Tabloid money: used car, one careful owner, £750 ONO
"Minted Boris Johnson has a FOURTH job after landing abook with publisher Hodder," writes Jack Blanchard in the DailyMirror. "The 51-year-old is set to pocket a £500,000 advancefor a biography of Shakespeare, on top of his £121,000-a-yeartaxpayer-funded earnings as London Mayor and MP for Uxbridge,and £275,000 a year as a newspaper columnist."
Boris' last book, The Churchill Factor, has sold more than 180,000copies but critics have noted that his writing career has limitedthe amount of time he devotes to his Parliamentary duties.According to a Tory source, Boris "turns up with his cycle helmeton and often gives the impression he hasn't read the briefing".
When the pensions freedom rules came into effect, we weregiven plenty of warnings about the dangers of giddy pensioners"buying Lamborghinis and luxury yachts," says Peter Hill in theDaily Express. We haven't seen much of that yet. "But what noone foretold was the jungle that the pensions industry wouldbecome, the sneaky fees deducting thousands of pounds frompension pots, the apparently unregulated chancers conning thevulnerable out of their cash... the private pensions business hasalways been dodgy, but now it's verging on the criminal."The government needs to sort this out "and give the unwaryreassurance that their hard-earned nest eggs are safe frompredators. There's no time to waste."
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