By J.C.
WHEN historians look back on the Britain’s public life in the early decades of the 21st century, they will talk of an “age of disillusionment”. Traces of such an era started to appear during the 2001-05 and 2005-10 parliaments, with the mistrust engendered by the Iraq War, the financial crisis and the MPs’ expenses outrages. But even by those standards, the rate of scandals in the current parliamentary term has been truly astonishing: cash-for-questions in Westminster, historical child abuse by prominent entertainment figures, rate fixing by a major bank, the imprisonment of a cabinet minister for perverting the course of justice, widespread illegal phone hacking by a major newspaper, the trial (and in one case conviction) of two of the most powerful figures in the media. To this litany of establishment disgraces, the past week has contributed allegations of another—possibly the most lurid of the lot.
