Zahawi, looking like a man on the run amid his tax row, might regret not resigning sooner

Angela Rayner was like a kid in the candy store: not one Tory scandal to ask a question about, but two! First, BBC chairman Richard Sharp, accused of helping Boris with a loan; second, Nadhim Zahawi, accused of avoiding tax.

Of course, in Red Ange’s eyes, they’re all guilty of being rich, and she’d gladly swap the HMRC for a guillotine. The tax man, however, has been surprisingly charitable. It calls Mr Zahawi’s tax arrangements “careless”, an odd term to describe giving your father founder shares stored in a Gibraltar-registered trust and potentially escaping millions in tax, but then that’s the difference between the rich and the rest of us. When I’m careless with money, I lose it. When the rich are careless with money, they double it. Batting for the Government: Jeremy Quin, who told Ange to let the PM’S ethics adviser “establish the facts”. Why does the PM need an adviser to tell him what is and isn’t ethical, demanded Ms Rayner? – triggering Tories to point out the “brass neck” (Angela Richardson) of Labour spending months demanding an ethical adviser be appointed and then telling Rishi to ignore him.

Richard Fuller noted that when MPS are invited to serve as a minister, they are asked to disclose “everything” – sex dungeon and all – and it’s only fair that they be shown “confidentiality” and “tolerance”, or else we might put off talented crooks and perverts from doing the job. This is the gist of defences of Mr Zahawi and they have a certain logic: if you hound the wealthy for being wealthy, they won’t go into public life. If a multimillionaire can’t make it in modern Britain, who can? “This is a government of the super rich, for the super rich!” cried Richard Burgon. Someone on the government benches replied: “Sit down, idiot.” It was nasty and unparliamentary.

Of the two men in the spotlight, it is Mr Sharp who smells most pungently of toast because, as Labour’s Ben Bradshaw stated, his organisation’s raison d’être is “impartiality”. We on the Right assume the BBC is run by Lefties, so it’s curious to discover how many Tories and friends of Tories turn out to be on staff, raising the question of why it churns out communist propaganda (it’s only a matter of time before Antiques Roadshow starts seizing the antiques and shipping them back to Benin, whether the locals want our Toby jugs or not).

As for Mr Zahawi, the feeling backstage is that the Government won’t stick the knife in him but nor will it shield him from attacks. He might come to regret not resigning sooner. He is, as his allies keep saying, a British success story: refugee, founder of a successful company, MP and briefly chancellor, a man of polish and style. But no sooner had the story broken than he was chased by a camera, wearing a parka, baseball cap and trainers – and that,

I regret, is what an accusation in politics will do to you. From Richard Branson to looking like a man on the run in one unfathomable allegation.