Kicking a Man When He’s Brown

I used to think that the feebleness of the scandals that occasionally brought down a minister or two in Edinburgh was matched only by the embarrassment one felt watching the Scottish press corps work itself into a frenzy in anticipation of feeding upon cheap cuts that properly corrupt countries would never consider feeding their dogs with.

There’s something similar in the air about the fund-raising scandal that is destroying Gordon Brown’s government. Except, of course, that after a decade of mendacity, he deserves it. Still, the scandal itself – laundered campaign contributions and a ridiculous scramble in which everyone does their best to implicate everyone else – is scarcely of epic proportions. Not when you compare it to actual policy scandals – the treatment of the armed forces, the hideous management of the public finances, the destruction of pensions schemes up and down the country, the sale, at knock-down prices, of the country’s gold reserves, the torpedoing of welfare reform proposals, and so on and so on.