A word on Lobbygate

The outing of Stephen Byers, Patricia Hewitt and co as willing to sell their services to anyone willing to pay is shocking. It is the kind of thing which makes me furious.

But almost as bad is the sight of one my local MPs excusing it as a an accident waiting to happen. Salter is gleeful in using the cash-for-influence as a stick with which to beat part-time tory MPs - trying to deflect attention from the fact that it is the members of his party who are being disciplined because it is they who were in power.

This kind of sleaze and worse permeated John Major's government, and it was one of the principle reasons voters swung behind Labour with their announcement they'd be 'whiter than white'.

So their failure to prevent similar occurrences in their own ranks is not only an admission of failure in the 13 years since they got elected, but it is a concession that Labour no longer holds any moral high-ground.

For all the fight-backs made by Labour in recent opinion polls to give their activists encouragement, and the optimism with which Labour seems to have accepted the prospect of a hung parliament, this is a serious setback which threatens to overshadow the more practical measures to be announced in tomorrow's Budget.