He’s the MP who put the grit into integrity

Aren’t we cruel? Owen Paterson was an MP who tried his hardest. It’s true he was trying his hardest for a company that slipped him £8,000 a month to use his position as an MP to make them rich, but he was making an effort and that’s the main thing.

We complain that our MPs don’t work hard enough, and then we moan if they spend 20 extra hours a week working at being corrupt! We can’t make up our minds WHAT we want.

Paterson was working for a company called Randox. It paid him to use his position to get favours, and by coincidence they won a £500million contract to provide the Covid tests.

What a feelgood story – that even a global pandemic brings a bit of good news for some people.

At one point he was in the cabinet as well, but luckily he wasn’t in charge of anything important.

He only had to run Northern Ireland, which is always simple, and that must be why he had all that spare time.

An independent inquiry found him guilty of seriously breaking the rules, so Boris Johnson ordered the Conservatives to overturn this decision.

This is a wonderful way of simplifying the modern world.

Now the thieves who were convicted of the Hatton Garden heist should vote to change the rules that say it’s illegal to blow up a wall in a jewellers and shove all the diamonds in a sack, and they can all go home from prison.

I’m having a bet on the Conservative

Party winning first prize at next year’s Chelsea Flower Show. Because they’ll bribe one of the judges, and poison all the other flowers. Then if they’re disqualified, they’ll vote to take no notice of the decision, and their dead tulip will win anyway.

The most touching part of the story is Owen Paterson’s statement that: “The last two years have been an indescribable nightmare. My integrity, which I hold very dear, has been repeatedly and publicly questioned.”

So he’s the victim in all this. This is the trouble these days – too many people think they can bully the corrupt community by calling them unkind words such as “corrupt”.

We should celebrate the Conservatives’ brave stand in defence of people seriously breaching the rules of parliament to pocket £8,000 a month.

Then we should reconsider the word “corrupt” and call them “honestychallenged” instead.

They should remember James Brown singing: “Say it out loud, I’m black and I’m proud.” And they should sing their own slogan: “We’re proud of our tribe that loves a huge bribe.”

A moving film will be made of a young Owen Paterson nervously working out how to come out as corrupt to his parents.

We’ll learn of a time when you could be jailed simply for following your natural urge to use your position as an elected representative to get contracts worth millions of pounds for a company.

So let’s celebrate brave Owen Paterson, and hope one day he leads a Corrupt Pride march, with all the “out” fiddling MPs chanting: “Say it loud, say it proud, we nick stuff that’s not allowed.”

Then he’ll have all the integrity he deserves at last.

FAVOURS Paterson