Leading Article: Small men, but their poison was powerful

It remains a little bewildering, even now: the "cash for questions" episode has been long drawn-out and horribly damaging for the Conservative Party. But the pettiness of the MPs' greed, and the sheer smallness of their grubby dissimulation is the striking thing. This was not a great case of evil men or grand corruption: it was more the sort of thing we are used to hearing about from Piddlemarsh Borough Council. In a great democratic institution which, within living memory, controlled a huge swath of the globe, Members of the once-dominant party have been found guilty of behaving like dim and sleazy councillors caught in cahoots with a bent solicitor and a sheepskin-coated developer. For all the fine suits and self-aggrandising rhetoric of Neil Hamilton, Ian Greer and the rest, they have brought the culture of greasy tenners, cheap cheroots and car park huddles to Westminster. Small lies; small kick-backs; small people.

None of it would have come out without the angry anti-Conservative campaign of Mohamed Al Fayed and some very fine journalistic digging, notably by The Guardian, whose courage and professionalism in all this we salute. In the dim corners of the Palace of Westminster and its penumbra of up- market restaurants, deals between lobbyists, short-of-cash MPs and nervous companies would have continued to be struck. And in the House, the paid wire-pulling, masquerading as innocent, public spirited questioning, would have carried on.

Was it in the end so awful? Was it bad enough to stain the collective reputation of Conservative MPs and subject their party, which has done so much to make modern Britain, to the angry derision of the public? After all, as so many of Mr Hamilton's apologists have been so ready to murmur, the level of corruption in France - Belgium - Italy is so much worse. Isn't it really the case that a self-important, arrogant and priggish media has got above itself and hounded fallible, silly but basically harmless men out of public life? This is the counter-accusation being thrown around, most notably in an increasingly bizarre series of attacks on the editor of The Guardian by a columnist and confidant of the Prime Minister called Paul Johnson.

The answer is that a culture that condones small lies moves swiftly to big lies, and that a political party whose members pocket modest bribes will start taking big ones. The apple's small spot of corruption will rot the whole barrel. More interesting is the reflection that, had it not been for the accident of the Fayed campaign and the press, neither the Conservative Party nor Parliament would have noticed the problem. John Major's early readiness to side with Mr Hamilton, and his happiness to see the Downey report's publication delayed, was not only partisan instinct. It was a modest but telling example of the clubby atmosphere of Westminster politics in action. There are Labour MPs whose outrage at media questioning of their conduct has been just as intense. Party politics aside, when it comes to criticisms of their ethics, Honourable Members have tended to hang together.

Yet what happened when the get-rich-quick atmosphere of the Eighties reached Westminster was that the old order of assumed probity and unspoken codes of behaviour simply crumpled. Confident, assertive men in a hurry, who happened to be Tory MPs rather than merchant bankers, felt they had a right to a share of the action. The interpenetration of business and politics, in a culture of deregulation, lucrative government contracts, privatisations and utter one-party dominance, created a glittering orchard of temptation. Rules were bent, then abandoned. For much of the time, the Labour Party, was so bound up in its own gruesome agonies that the necessary scrutiny was lacking. The old public service culture of Whitehall and Westminster proved utterly unable to defend itself against the likes of Neil Hamilton.

It was not ideal that journalism became the de facto opposition to this. The best journalism is informative and sceptical about power, but not, in a democracy, opposed to power. Years of increasing opposition to the Thatcher and Major governments have left some journalists unable to distinguish between independence from politicians and knee-jerk hostility to them. Nevertheless, for a vital few years, the most damaging and useful probing of a governing party that had lost the old rulebook came from reporters and columnists. Without them, there would have been no Nolan report or Downey report, no rethinking of the Commons rules, and no unmasking of individuals. The greasy tenner culture would have spread further into government; the scandals would have been worse.

We hope that that period has now been brought to an end by Sir Gordon Downey and his employers, the MPs themselves. If the politicians have finally determined to take a grip of their own standards and image, then we are all winners. If the new Labour government has learnt, never to forget, the bitter lesson that hundreds of decent, honourable MPs can be tainted in the public mind by a handful of sleazy and protected fools then it need never suffer the Tories' recent agonies.

In a democracy we need to respect the motives and basic sense of public service of people elected to run the country. Healthy scepticism about politicians is natural and healthy. But cynicism about politics as a trade is a kind of poison. That cynicism has been spread in the past few years by a few silly, greedy men. Sir Gordon's language was tough but necessary. They have let down not only their party, but the political system they were once so proud to represent.