The Death of Gentlemanly Government

It seems like only yesterday that conservative pundits were denouncing MPs for “destroying trust” with their fraudulent expense claims and writing books exposing New Labour deceitful spin with such stirring titles as The Rise of Political Lying. How soft those strident voices have become now that a centre-right rather than a centre-left government is doing the lying.

Conservative and particularly Liberal writers have yet to understand what they have thrown away by resorting to the discredited politics of the past. One of the attractions of the Coalition, even to those who did not vote for it, was that it looked like a government of gentleman was in power, after the thuggish, know-nothing rule of Brown, Whelan and McBride.

If you want to play the gentleman, however, you must first learn that your word is your bond, and the Liberal Democrats have broken theirs in scandalous fashion.