The Lord Sewel scandal makes me feel proud to be British. For here, thanks to some glorious John Wilkes-style dirt-digging by the Sun — in your face, Leveson! — we have a proper political scandal.
This ain’t no yawn-fest about MPs claiming the cost of a Kit-Kat or accidentally favouriting a gay-porn tweet: sad little pseudo-scandals which in recent years have tainted the good name of ignominy.
No, the fall of Sewel is a full-on, drugged-up, peer-and-prostitutes scandal, of the kind Britain used to be pretty good at before the square Blairites and cautious Cameroons took over. The disgracing of Sewel is a reminder of British politics at its saucy best. Sewel, I salute you.
Like our steel industry and pop music, Britain’s ability to do scandal has been in decline. The nation which gave the world the Profumo affair — call-girls! Soviets! Orgies! — has in recent years clutched its pearls over such non-stories as Peter Mandelson getting a loan off a rich mate and Jacqui Smith’s husband spending £10 on porn films.
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