THANKS to the Conservatives and their Anglo-British nationalist obsession with Brexit, the only thing that the shops currently have an assured supply of is plenty of gaps on their shelves.
However, the Conservatives can certainly be relied upon to deliver one sleazy scandal after another. Boris Johnson and his party are a vending machine of sleaze – every time a Tory donor sticks some dark money in their ever-receptive slot, out pops another corruption scandal.
This week we have seen questions raised about the Prime Minister's freebie holiday in a luxury villa in Spain, and this follows on the heels of the scandal about how Johnson paid for the expensive redecoration of his official Downing Street flat. Today it was announced that he will not list the free holiday in the MPs' register of interests meaning that he will not have to detail the value of the gift he received.
READ MORE: Keir Starmer WILL miss open goal on Tory sleaze scandal
However, this week has been dominated by the British Government's shameful attempts to protect former Conservative minister Owen Paterson after the independent Parliamentary Commissioner ruled that he had egregiously breached rules against paid lobbying on more than one occasion and decided that his offence was serious enough that he should be suspended from the Commons for 30 days. Any suspension for longer than 10 days automatically triggers the process by which the offending MP's constituents can petition Parliament to have them recalled, forcing a by-election.
Johnson wanted to change the system of scrutiny by replacing the independent Parliamentary Commissioner with a tame committee of MPs with a built-in Conservative majority and chaired by a Tory.
Conservative MPs are reporting that they came under intense pressure from Tory whips and the Prime Minister's office to vote to protect Paterson by leaving any final decision on whether his lobbying activities broke the rules to this new proposed Tory committee that would rubber-stamp sleaze in order to protect the party. You don't have to be a genius to work out that Johnson, who doesn't care about Owen Paterson because he's only ever cared about himself, was pushing for the change because he knows that it would make it far easier for him to get away with his own sleazy and money-grabbing self-interest. Standards in public life be damned.
None of this seems to trouble the tiny contingent of Conservative North British MPs too much, none of whom voted against a change which would in effect allow the Conservative Party to be the investigating body, the judge and the jury on its own sleazy and corrupt activities.
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon condemns potential peerage for Owen Paterson
Alister Jack and Douglas Ross both abstained because they were on important harrumphage business here in Scotland. The remaining shameless and spineless Scottish Conservative MPs – David Mundell, Andrew Bowie, David Duguid and John Lamont – all obediently trotted into the voting lobby to support the destruction of independent oversight of MPs' lobbying and business activities and to give themselves and Boris Johnson a get-out-of-jail-free card when it comes to allegations of financial impropriety against MPs.
It should be clear by now that not only is Westminster incapable of reforming the British Constitution, it is also incapable of ensuring that figures in the British Government are held to the most basic standards of decent behaviour in public office. Westminster is broken and cannot be fixed, it can only be left behind.
This piece is an extract from today's REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.
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