As the stench around Keith Vaz grows, how can we have any faith in Parliament cleaning up its act?
THE stench around disgraced Labour bigwig Keith Vaz continues to rise.
Vaz’s pal John Bercow ignored his sex antics for a year.
This does nothing to convince the public that Parliament has cleaned itself up and become transparent in its affairs.
The place still looks like a closed, self-serving Establishment den.
Maybe, like the shameless Vaz and bumbling Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Bercow believed it was a private matter.
Immediately after hitting the front pages brazen Vaz blamed the Press, claiming they were at fault for exposing him.
A belief that it was consenting adults doing what they agreed behind closed doors was allowed to grow.
But it’s not.
Vaz was a powerful, rich man satisfying his lust by paying poor immigrants for sex.
That isn’t an even relationship at all.
On his parliamentary committee Vaz sat in judgment about the rights and wrongs of prostitution.
He was in favour of decriminalising prostitution believing it shouldn’t be a moral issue.
Meanwhile, he bought the services of young Romanians knowing nothing about what led them to sell themselves, or the pimps profiting behind them.
The trafficking and exploitation of young men and women in Britain is a tragedy.
Vaz’s behaviour has damaging and far-reaching repercussions.
By blaming others he does nothing to try to help those at risk.
It may have been a private transaction, but it was far from a private affair.
It is very much in the public interest.
Winkleman-ed out
STRICTLY’S Claudia Winkleman got it right. We all fund the BBC and we should all know how much the talent costs.
Finally, it looks like the Government are listening. They aren’t going to let Beeb bosses wriggle out of telling us.
More than 100 stars trousering at least £150,000 a year will be revealed soon.
Nice two-step, Claudia.
A bunch of chokers
APART from a handful of militants, there can’t be anybody left in Britain who backs the junior doctors strikes.
Last week we revealed that less than five per cent of junior docs support the walkouts.
Now senior medics are calling on them to reconsider.
The tiny amount of oxygen left for this action is almost complete gone.