Keith Vaz’s rent boys have done a valuable political job

Why do people always fall from grace for the wrong reasons? I had always hoped that if Keith Vaz finally fell from whatever form of grace he could lay claim to, it would be for really good reasons.  Regular readers will know that my detestation of him dates back to 1989 when as a young MP he first offered support to Salman Rushdie in the business of the Ayatollah’s fatwa and then a few weeks later led a demonstration of thousands of angry British Muslims in opposition to Rushdie and his novel. Someone who is capable of that is capable of absolutely anything.

Such as hauling the Metropolitan Police in front of your Parliamentary committee and forcing them to make a grovelling apology for not knowing that a Muslim schoolgirl in London was planning to head to Syria to become a jihadi rape-volunteer.  Mr Vaz got his grandstanding moment.  The police got their humiliation.  And only later – whoops – did anybody bother to find out that the father of the girl in question (who had also appeared before Mr Vaz’s committee, all teddy bears, tears and incomprehension) was himself a Muslim extremist who could be found on a weekend hollering for the death of the West with the best of them.

Yet none of this ever seemed to catch up with him.  So the Eastern European rent boys will have to do it.  But I cannot say that I relish the fact.  My own view is that if Keith is into the whole gay thing then his options were probably somewhat limited by necessity and one ought to feel slightly sorry for him.  He certainly ought not to have unprotected sex with rent boys while married (though my thoughts on this matter aren’t developed, mainly because I just don’t want to think about it much).