It was always the British adage that “Socialists get caught with their hand in the till, Tories get caught with their trousers down.” While Tony Blair was cleaning out “Old” Labour, whose members’ affinity with labor unions and significant patronage in local councils enabled the odd bit of corruption, John Major’s government Ministers were quite happily engaging in all sorts of sexual shenanigans. The result was a party-wide reputation for “sleaze.” I have suggested before that the GOP might be going the same way.

One thing that particularly incensed the British public was Ministers’ refusal to resign when they were caught. As I recall, one wag summarized it as follows: “In the old days, a Tory would retire to the library, a waiter would bring in a bottle of whisky and a pearl handled revolver and they’d do the decent thing. Today, they’d shoot the waiter and run away with the whisky.”