LITTLEJOHN

‘ What if it was a Tory caught with hookers? two Eastern European'

LADIES and gentlemen of the jury, in the matter of public opinion versus Keith ‘Call Me Jim’ Vaz MP, I appear for the defence. Every man is entitled to a fair trial, especially after three decades of devoted public service. In this case, the facts as presented may prima facie appear damning, but please allow me to present an alternative theory of my client’s behaviour.

Much has been made of Mr Vaz’s statement: ‘We need to get this party started.’ But, I contend, we should read nothing more into his words than, indeed, a desire to get the party started.

We have been presented with ‘evidence’ to suggest that this party had been convened for nefarious purposes — that is, Mr Vaz’s desire to have sexual relations with various male prostitutes of Eastern European origin.

Nothing could be further from the truth. As a well-known champion of diversity, Mr Vaz organised the gathering as a sincere token of friendship to citizens of EU member states, designed to reassure them that their right of residency in this country remains secure despite the recent disgraceful and pig-ignorant vote in favour of Brexit.

Unlike some other publicity-seeking public figures and senior Labour colleagues such as Pixie Balls- Cooper, Mr Vaz was merely demonstrating his deep commitment to welcoming vulnerable migrants into his own home — in this case a £400,000 flat in Edgware bought with a perfectly legitimate personal loan, secured against a forthcoming postal order from a dear friend in the Mumbai business community.

With the modesty and self-effacement that have been the defining characteristics of his distinguished career, my client intended to keep his hospitality a private matter.

It is typical of the ingrained cynicism of the hyenas and jackals of the Press — rightly condemned by upstanding figures such as Lord Justice Leveson, Alan Partridge, Hugh Grant and Sir Oswald Mosley — that this gesture of human kindness has been wilfully misinterpreted to ascribe to Mr Vaz the basest of intentions.

When my client offered to buy some ‘Coke’ for his guests, he was referring not to the Class-A drug currently under review by the Commons Home Affairs Committee, but to the popular carbonated beverage brewed by the Coca-Cola company.

I must stress that he had no intention of partaking himself, since not only is he suffering from diabetes and related weight issues, he is a steadfast supporter of the crossparty parliamentary initiative to reduce the excessive amount of sugar in soft drinks.

However, being of impeccable liberal inclination, he did not wish to deny his guests the pleasure of imbibing a delicious beverage which was until fairly recently unobtainable in the former Soviet Bloc, but is now available universally thanks to the extension of the EU’s benevolent single market.

There is also the matter of ‘poppers’, which some maintain incorrectly is a reference to so-called ‘highs’ intended to intensify sexual pleasure, especially among members of the gay community.

Ladies and gentlemen, my client was in fact referring to the other kind of ‘ poppers’ which, when ignited, fire streamers and confetti into the air and are a common feature of parties from children’s birthdays to New Year’s Eve celebrations. These can be bought from branches of Tesco for a very reasonable £7.99 for a pack of 100.

MY CLIENT had laid on party hats, novelty horns, ice cream and jelly — none of which were deemed worthy of mention in the newspaper reports. He had also hired a clown to jump out of a cake shaped like the EU flag. Unfortunately the clown was a no-show due to a sevenmile tailback at the Hanger Lane Gyratory system.

Now let us come to the video and audio recordings, taken surreptitiously without my client’s permission, in breach of the privacy provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights.

These purport to show Mr Vaz asking one of his guests: ‘Have you f***** him yet?’ Again, this remark has been cast in the worst possible light. If you listen carefully, my client was in fact asking: ‘Have you found him yet?’ — talking about another partygoer who had secreted himself in an airing cupboard during a game of Hide and Seek.

There are also grainy photos of Mr Vaz apparently rubbing himself intimately against a young man who seems to be wearing a blindfold. Again, there is a perfectly innocent explanation. They were taking part in a lively game of Blind Man’s Bluff.

So you see, members of the jury, my client is the victim of entrapment, a deliberate smear campaign . . .

Or perhaps not. SORRY, I can’t keep this up. I know it’s a serious business, but I haven’t stopped laughing since the Sunday Mirror broke this story. It was just like the good old days, when the peccadilloes of politicians were a staple of our Sunday morning entertainment.

No wonder the Establishment rejoiced when the News of the World shut down. This is straight out of the You Couldn’t Make It Up files — the chairman of a Commons committee investigating prostitution and drugs caught bang to rights in a rent-boys-and-cocaine sting.

There is a God. It couldn’t happen to a nicer man. This oleaginous creep has been a stain on our parliamentary democracy for as long as I can remember.

His transgressions have been well documented. These include being suspended from the House for a month for making false allegations against a former policewoman; giving misleading information to the Commons Standards Committee; failing to register payments totalling £4,500; involvement in the Hinduja ‘cash for passports’ affair; interfering in an inquiry into his friend, the bent solictor Shahrokh Mireskandari, without declaring an interest; being mixed up with corrupt cop Ali Dizaei; and being forced to repay parliamentary expenses to which he was not entitled.

Then there was that dreadful business in which he gatecrashed the grief of the family of the nurse who was found hanged after getting caught up in the Kate Middleton hospital phone hoax scandal, forcing them to pose with him outside the Commons.

None of this has prevented him rising to membership of the Privy Council and becoming chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee.

It is to the eternal shame of his fellow MPs that Vaz has been allowed to get away with it for so long.

Of course, he’s blatantly played the race card throughout his career. If a white Tory male MP had committed half the indiscretions of Vaz, he’d have been ruined years ago and probably ended up in jail.

Even now, Vaz is attracting sympathy from some of his fellow politicians, especially on the Left. They claim his privacy has been invaded and it’s a ‘personal tragedy’ — the line they always trot out in gay sex scandals.

JUST imagine if Vaz had been a Conservative front- bencher caught with a couple of Eastern European hookers. The sisterhood would be howling from the rooftops. Look, in the normal course of events, I couldn’t care less what anyone gets up to behind closed doors. But here we have an MP who lords it over the rest of us and has official oversight of drugs laws, prostitution and the police, indulging in the exact dubious behaviour he has been appointed to investigate.

At the very least, offering to buy cocaine for his ‘guests’ is intent to supply — a serious criminal offence, if true. So why hasn’t he had his collar felt?

All this might explain why Vaz was so keen to rush to Luton Airport on January 1, 2014, to welcome Romanian migrants to Britain. Maybe he was cruising for potential sexual partners.

Then again, the defence might argue that he was the victim of cruel hoax — like that famous Monty Python sketch about the man accused of producing an Anglo-Hungarian phrasebook with intent to cause a breach of the peace.

For instance, a simple request in Hungarian comes out in English as: ‘My nipples explode with delight.’

When a Hungarian tourist uses the book to ask for a packet of cigarettes, what the tobacconist hears is: ‘If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me? I am no longer infected.’

And the Hungarian phrase: ‘ Can you direct me to the station?’ becomes in English: ‘ Please fondle my bum.’

Perhaps when Vaz said to the Romanians: ‘I am Keith Vaz, MP. Welcome to Britain,’ they consulted their phrasebook, which translated it as:

‘I am Jim, a washing machine salesman. Do you want to come back to my place, bouncy bouncy?’

Yeah, all right then, you smooth talking devil.