The Spectator’s Notes | 27 March 2010

The Dispatches programme which entrapped Messrs Hoon and Byers, Patricia Hewitt et al wanted to set them up as villains (which, indeed, they seemed). So it failed to notice the rather sad undertow of what they were saying. Geoff Hoon put it most clearly: ‘There’s nothing in my diary for April.’ Stephen Byers confirmed it when he said, when caught, that he had been ‘exaggerating’. The simple point is that these people are desperate, and virtually unemployed. They are largely pretending that companies beat a path to their door. What Mr Hoon described as ‘Hoon work’ — as opposed to the work for which the taxpayer pays him — is not coming his way in big enough quantities. Once it had heard the MPs state their opening bid for a fee (usually £3,000 a day), the programme should have started to bargain them down. I bet they — the men, at least — would have ended up settling for a free evening at Stringfellows.