Lord Swampy’s greed is a true test for Corbyn

WHEN will they ever learn? Politicians cannot seem to grasp that their greed for public cash discredits not just themselves but the whole democratic system. As they feather their nests, they poison democracy itself.

Lord Bassam of Brighton, Jeremy Corbyn’s Chief Whip in the House of Lords, has been pocketing an annual taxpayers’ handout of £36,366, awarded because he does not live in the capital.

On top of that he has been claiming £6,400 travel expenses each year, which he has offered to pay back.

Did he imagine that the handout was some sort of bonus? Lord Bassam, a former social worker and militant squatters’ leader known as‘ Lord Swampy’, is presumably well versed in housing matters.

He must at some stage have asked himself why Parliament had allocated this sum to him. Did it never cross his mind that it was to enable him to fund accommodation in London to allow him to perform his duties?

In which case, did it not occur to him that – since he returned almost nightly to his £ 1 million house in Brighton and hardly ever spent anything on accommodation in London – he was not morally entitled to the cash?

This sort of greed, as we know all too well, is not confined to the Labour Party, but there is a certain type of self-righteous Leftist who seems to think he is so personally wonderful that everything he does is right.

Could those pious years of social work and smug protest have given him an exaggerated idea of his own worth?

Yet in the days when he was still an activist he would surely have derided anyone – especially an unelected peer – who pocketed thousands in taxpayers’ money which would certainly have been better spent on housing the poor. And he would have been right.

Mr Corbyn makes much of being a man of egalitarian principle who has never sought to enrich himself through politics. He now faces a considerable test of character and political will.

If he tolerates this sort of behaviour among his senior lieutenants, we will know for sure that he is in reality just another politician.