Sleazy does it again for Johnson & pals

TORY sleaze is no surprise when self-interest is the party’s driving force.

Britain’s Got Talent judge David Walliams, of all people, best described the national political dividing line.

In my home town of South Shields a few years back, Walliams – a guest of then MP David Miliband – said he felt a Conservative vote was essentially selfish, while a vote for Labour was more generous as it involved considering other people.

I remembered this when Boris Johnson, a sleazy Prime Minister with no moral compass, announced a limited inquiry by a Tory-connected lawyer into the exploiting of personal friendships by David Cameron, with a chunk of the Conservative Government.

Greedy Cameron thinks he did nothing wrong because cronyism, operating a chumocracy and ruling for personal rather than national interest is simply what Tories do.

Johnson is settling a personal grudge against his Bullingdon rival but he’s also terrified that the public spread of the sleaze virus will destroy him the way it did John Major in the 1990s, and hopes his authorised probe into Cameron and civil servants will inoculate other Conservatives. Beast of Bolsover Dennis Skinner is owed an apology for the time he was kicked out of the House of Commons for calling Cameron “Dodgy Dave” – but this is the moment that Keir Starmer has been waiting for. There is ample evidence that the electorate is concerned about what the Labour leader –in a strong Parliamentary performance – called the return of Tory sleaze. Nobody likes to be taken for a mug and Cameron, Rishi Sunak, Matt Hancock and Johnson all face serious questions about Tory backscratching.

The VIP deals for friends and family were a party looking after its own at the expense of taxpayers. These scandals aren’t just about Dave and Boris, or Rishi, or Matt. This is about who runs, who owns and who benefits in a Britain controlled by a conceited elite.