THE dog days of the Conservative administration that preceded today's Labour government were tainted by a string of sleazy scandals. As Labour's star fades, former senior figures in the party seem also to have been trying to fill their boots before leaving Westminster.

On March 22nd the Labour Party suspended three former ministers: Stephen Byers, Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon. They were accused of bringing the party into disrepute, after being secretly filmed boasting of being able to peddle access to the influential in return for cash.

It is not proven that they have broken any rules: MPs can have other jobs, as long as they declare the fact in the register of members' interests or when making parliamentary interventions that relate to them. Nor is it clear that lobbying did take place, or that, if it did, it worked. It appears that no money changed hands. None of the three is seeking re-election.

Also caught on camera by Channel 4's “Dispatches” programme, and offering similar lobbying services, was Margaret Moran, a discredited Labour backbencher. She has not attended parliament since May last year, when the Daily Telegraph revealed that she had repeatedly designated first one home, and then another, as her official second address—and claimed serially for their refurbishment on expenses. Again, she had not broken the rules. She has been suspended from the Labour Party and barred from standing as one of its electoral candidates. Another backbencher, Sir John Butterfill, a Conservative, was censured by his party's leader, David Cameron, after he also featured in the programme.

It was never meant to be thus. The cash-for-questions affair that rocked the last Tory government provoked John Major, then prime minister, into establishing the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Lord Nolan, its first chairman, recommended not only that MPs should fully disclose their interests, but that all public servants should abide by seven principles that included transparency, integrity, accountability and honesty. That way, they would be seen to be serving their country rather than themselves.

The committee's current chairman, Sir Christopher Kelly, is supposed to be tightening Parliament's lax rules on expenses. His job has been addled by a parallel effort to audit recent expenses and to establish a new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, which will have the final say on reform.

Sir Christopher bemoans the effect of such bad behaviour and “the further damage that [it] will do to people's perception of Members of Parliament”. Arguably, it is rational—if not wholly admirable—for people who will be jobseekers in about six weeks to find what employment they can. Yet the debacle adds to the vicious hostility people feel towards politicians in general.