Greed, vanity and a zombie Parliament

TODAY comes yet more confirmation, as if it were needed, that Britain’s politicians are grasping, vain, self-interested and shamefully underemployed.

As evidence of their greed, it emerges that more than a quarter of MPs – among them ministers and senior Labour members – now rake in extra money by employing relatives at our expense.

Shockingly, the cost of family members on the public payroll has risen by 50 per cent since 2010 to almost £3.8million, while many of them enjoyed substantial salary increases when other state sector workers endured pay freezes.

Weren’t such disgraceful abuses meant to have been stamped out after the expenses scandal five years ago? Not to be outdone, peers have blocked a cost-saving plan to share catering with the Commons – for the breathtaking reason they feared ‘ the quality of Champagne would not be as good’. Meanwhile, as Sebastian Shakespeare reports on Page 32, risibly vain MPs have insisted that the TV cameras in the House should be relocated to show them in a more flattering light, complaining that at present they emphasise bald patches and bags under their eyes.

Most depressing is today’s revelation that Government business has effectively ground to a halt until the election. With bickering Lib Dems and Tories unable to agree on anything, MPs have been put on a two-day week until next May. Could there be any more damning indictment of the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act 2011, which condemned us to five years of this push-me-pull-you Coalition? What this country needs is a government with a fresh mandate to tackle our fast mounting, crippling debts and uphold the nation’s interests in an increasingly competitive and perilous world.

Instead, we’re saddled with two-day-aweek politicians, obsessed with feathering their family nests, concealing their bald patches and maintaining the quality of their Champagne.

No wonder the political class is held in such contempt.