Tory rule breakers are back again.

 Tory rule breakers are back again.

Don't you just love politicians? They simply think they can get away with murder. Perhaps they believe that nobody will notice if we all blink and just ignore them. The nasty smell of corruption, duplicity, double dealing, sneaky, covert behaviour, underhand tactics, deceiving, scheming and conniving behind our backs is back on the discussion table again. How did they do it? They must have an inherent flair for trying to pull the wool over our eyes. So why are we so shocked and appalled at this deplorable greed, this insatiable lust for more and more publicity and notoriety?

Today the Right Honourable or perhaps not so Honourable Geoffrey Cox stands accused of supplementing his already well endowed fortune with £900,000 earnings and trips to the Caribbean. Now money and wealth have always gone hand in hand with the Tories. The titled grandees, the Tory backbenchers with vested interests in big multi million  pound conglomerates and the ones who just want to feather their nest, are now under the fiercest scrutiny of a  public who can only dream of aspiring to their privileged position in society. 

Now the Tories have found themselves boxed into a corner they may have difficulty in wriggling out of. The Conservative party, whatever moral high ground they adopt when they move into 10 Downing Street have once again have fallen into a trap of their own making. Sleaze, sex scandals and outrageous deception continue to be their enduring enemy whichever way they look. It may, one day, lead to their downfall since only the Tories could deny any culpability in the dodgy dealings of financial jiggery-pokery. 

So tonight in Glasgow where the leaders of the world are still wrestling with climate change issues that somehow seem beyond any kind of resolution or clarification, Boris Johnson, Britain's embattled Prime Minister really doesn't know which way to turn. In one ear are the viciously critical snipers who think that he just wants Britain to end up in a filthy, potentially poisonous gutter. Then there are the people who simply want an explanation on the subject of its grasping money grabbers, the untouchable mercenaries who love to earn a million more here and there in the hope that the public will still be their friends. 

But when Owen Patterson became the latest individual to declare that he too indeed had lined his pockets with exotic trips to the Caribbean, we knew what kind of reception he'd get. Patterson's case for the defence is that he was working as a consultant and just trying to add a couple of thousand quid to his already swollen bank account. No harm in that surely or is there? But this is surely unacceptable behaviour for there is still a vast majority of Britain who haven't been on holiday since goodness knows when. 

The truth is that the Conservative party may have left their moral compass behind them without giving a single thought for the damaging consequences. We can now back in time to the 1980s when the so called literary genius of one Jeffrey Archer once blatantly falsified his CV with information about a degree he'd allegedly gained at an American university. There were the sexual dalliances of Cecil Parkinson and the arrogant declarations of  Norman Tebbitt, a man convinced that the three million who were unemployed at the time were just bone idle, couldn't be bothered to work and were a drain on the nation. 

Then there were the unfortunate business dealings of Michael Heseltine who got his fingers terribly burnt in a helicopter company while still in Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet. Memorably the whole of Mrs Thatcher's Cabinet were delightfully caricatured by TV's Spitting Image, a British satirical masterpiece that had most of us in stitches. For the Tory loyalists this is not a good time to be seen behaving in such a cavalier and irresponsible fashion. But then again this could be hard wired into the Tories philosophy-cum manifesto. Maybe this has always been the way and we should have known things would turn out in the way they have. 

The fact is that the dubious figures who comprise the Tory mischief makers are desperately trying to keep the lowest of profiles. We have a planet to become extremely concerned about and there have to be overriding priorities. When Boris Johnson emerges from his Scottish climate change summit this week he would be well advised to remember that next Sunday is Remembrance Sunday, a time for red poppies, and that sombre reflection on the sacrifices millions of our soldiers made during both World Wars. It is time for the British government to keep their heads out of the money trough, consider the plight of both the homeless and disadvantaged while always thinking of others rather than themselves. It shouldn't be a lot to ask for.