Tory sleaze

Cameron's astonishing appointment of former minister Jonathon Aitken to head a Tory working party shows how desparate the Tories are to bring back wayward former Conservatives to the fold.

Aitken, who supported UKIP at the last European election, was not only jailed for perjury (having initially tried to sue the journalist who blew his cover!) - he has to this day not revealed what he was up to in the Paris Ritz as a guest of the Saudis while he was defence procurement minister.

I was reminded of some of the other sleaze cases of the last Tory government - far more spectacular than any of the supposed sleaze allegations made nowadays - when Neil Hamilton popped up the other day to accuse the EU of... fraud. Coming from the man who received cash in brown envelopes in return for favours in parliament, this is a bit rich. Hamilton is also UKIP - is there something that magically attracts discredited Tories to them?

But, if they want him back, why don't the Tories appoint Hamilton as head of a working group on parliamentary standards? And Jeffrey Archer on prisons? Cecil Parkinson on child support by absent fathers? John Wakeham (of Enron fame) on corporate social responsibility? And Piers Merchant (of teenage mistress fame, but now Chief Executive of UKIP) on teenage sex?