Vicky Pryce – why jail will be the making of her

Just before Vicky Pryce was sentenced on Monday, her QC made a plea for clemency on the grounds that the case had already ‘undermined her professional position considerably’. In other words, she’d been punished enough and to send her to prison would be excessive.

But had the judge felt sympathy for Pryce on account of her loss of status, that would have been a good reason to send her to prison, not to give her a suspended sentence. What her QC overlooked is that, for people of a certain class, a spell in jail is actually a good career move, particularly after a public scandal has ended their existing career. Pryce’s chances of being re-employed by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills are now quite slim, but after a few months in Holloway, a cornucopia of new opportunities will open up to her.

Take Jonathan Aitken. Like Pryce, he was found guilty of perverting the course of justice, a conviction that ended his political career. However, after serving a grand total of seven months, he relaunched himself as a professional upper-middle-class ex-jailbird, writing not one but two books about the experience. He now makes regular media appearances to talk about such subjects as finding serenity in the Slough of Despond, particularly when another MP is publicly disgraced. No shortage of work, then.

I actually met Aitken when we both appeared on a reality show, a frequent source of employment for posh ex-cons. Lord Brocket, who served two and a half years for insurance fraud in 1996, made it to the final four on series three of I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. With good behaviour, Vicky Pryce will be out in time to appear in series 13 this December. I have absolutely no doubt she’ll be asked to do it, and she might well be tempted by the six-figure sum.