Any other business – Which is worse: theft, drug-dealing, profiting from falling shares or giving cash to Tories?

I thought editors came on a bit strong with  the ‘Jailbird Honours’ headlines in response to New Year gongs for ex drug-dealer Chris Preddie (OBE) and former HMP Ford inmate Gerald Ronson (CBE), the property tycoon who was convicted of theft and false accounting in the Guinness share-support scandal in 1990. But what was interesting about responses to the list was that by far the largest helping of hostility was aimed at the hedge fund manager Paul Ruddock — who was knighted for donating large sums to the V&A museum and other charities, but damned for making £100­million (for his firm, Lansdowne Partners) by betting on the fall of Northern Rock and other bank shares, and giving £500,000 to the Conservatives.

Well, I suppose everyone loves a reformed sinner, whereas Ruddock represents the archetypal hate figure of our times: the amoral financier whose vast personal wealth allows him painlessly to write cheques to good causes and political parties in a way that is somehow an affront to the rest of us. But it is worth remembering that Gerald Ronson was once an archetypal hate figure, too, as a ruthless 1980s wheeler-dealer who profited by breaching City rules. Ronson himself never accepted that he did anything dishonest in the Guinness deal but also never succeeded in having the conviction overturned, his final appeal to the House of Lords having failed in 2002.

Instead, he gradually won new respect by steering his property business through turbulent times, leading an exemplary Jewish family life, and quietly giving away many of his own millions. ‘Did I get a black eye, yes,’ he told Nick Kochan in an interview for The Spectator a couple of years ago. ‘Did I take it, yes; and did I come back better than anyone else in the Guinness case? Yes.’

‘Rich lists’ place both the Ronson and Ruddock fortunes in the £200 million-plus range.