Delingpole on Friday: Ed Miliband’s willy on the Facebook? We should be so lucky….

When is it acceptable for an ex-deputy mayor of London to take selfies of his penis and post them on the internet?

My answer: “almost always.”

Though I’m by no means an expert on the penis in question – the images were tastefully pixelated on the reproductions I saw – I’m fully prepared to give Richard Barnes the benefit of doubt and assume that his member is a large, splendid and photogenic one.

Not as large and splendid, as mine, perhaps. But certainly large and splendid enough for him to justify standing semi-undressed in front of a mirror, pot-belly and red braces akimbo, and muttering to himself: “I know what I’ll do right now. I think I’ll take a photograph of my todger and share it with my good friends at….” Well I’m guessing Grindr, here, rather than MumsNet or Club Penguin, but since Richard Barnes – Dick as he’s now known, if he wasn’t before – is being quite coy on the matter we cannot be sure.

Here is what he said after the story broke:

“[It was] utterly and totally a mistake. I’ve been hacked into. I’ve no idea [what happened]. I’m annoyed and shaking with anger.”

“I’m a 65-year-old gay man on his own… It’s not the sort of thing I do. Do you really think I would be that f****** stupid after 30 years in politics?”

Why is it that I’m reminded of the South Park episode where Randy gets covered in ectoplasm by a passing ghost?

Seems to me that Dick is protesting too much and quite unnecessarily. He’s an out homosexual. He’s not married. No children or animals were harmed in the making of his photos. He never, during his period in office, tried to do anything to ban homosexuality or auto-penis-photographing – so it’s not as though he’s guilty even of hypocrisy. He wasn’t doing anything illegal.

Furthermore, I gather, it is entirely normal in homosexual circles to share cock photographs. (At least it seemed to be during a dinner I once attended, thrown by a well-known fashion designer). So why on earth does Dick need to be so evasive?

Well, the clue I would guess lies in the second part of his statement: the one about it being “f****** stupid” do such things “after 30 years in politics.”

What Dick appears to be saying here is that when you’re a politician different standards of behaviour ought to be expected of you than when you are a civilian. Lots of readers, I’m sure, will be tempted to agree with this view, but I’m not sure that I do. Indeed, I’d argue that it is a misconception which goes to the heart of everything that is wrong with modern politics.

The fundamental problem, it seems to me, is that our expectations of politicians are much too unreasonable. We imagine that despite the long, unsocial hours they work they  should somehow be grateful for their relatively modest pay and that by no means should they seek to supplement their income from other sources. We want them to be normal, to talk and think like the rest of us, to have hinterland and broad experience in “the real world”, yet the moment they do anything that hints they’re anything more than squeaky clean, career safe Westminster automatons, we splash them all over the tabloids and demand their resignation. We want them to be human and yet we want them to be superhuman. In this we are asking the impossible.

Don’t think I have any faith in most MPs. I don’t. I think they’re a frightful shower. But they’re a frightful shower whose rain of piss and excrement we the electorate in many ways invited and deserve. We hold them to account for things that really don’t matter (expense fiddling; sexual peccadillos), while on the things that have a serious impact on our lives (tax, public spending, regulation) we allow them to get away with murder.

If ever you were in the slightest doubt on this issue let me refer you to Exhibit A: Ed Miliband’s Wikipedia entry. I quote:

“During the 2009 parliamentary expenses scandal, Miliband was named by the Daily Telegraph as one of the “saints” of the scandal, due to his claiming one of the lowest amounts of expenses in the House of Commons and submitting no claims that later had to be paid back.”

This gall from Red Ed – or whichever friend of  Red Ed it was who submitted that snippet on his behalf  – is breathtaking. Miliband – scion of Marxist millionaire Ralph, owner of a Hampstead home worth at least £2.3 million – is tacitly asking us to be impressed by the fact that, unlike some of his more financially straitened colleagues, he didn’t go mad for duck houses, flat screen TVs and bunches of flowers for friends’ funerals. Big of you, Ed. We’re all jolly grateful for your forbearance, I’m sure.

But as the first Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed supervised the introduction of the Climate Change Act, a measure which commits Britain to legally binding yet economically suicidal carbon dioxide reduction targets at the cost of £18 billion a year till 2050.

Now suppose, instead of voting for the act, (which all but seven MPs did), those MPs had decided themselves to award a pay rise of, say, £1 million each. Had they done so, the taxpayer would have been saved at least £17 billion per annum – and probably considerably more when you take into account the burden imposed on economic growth by the Climate Change Act’s anti-market measures.

Which kind of MP – or Deputy Mayor of London – would you rather have representing you?

One that treated himself to the odd £7,000 IKEA table on expenses to bolster his salary or who indulged in the odd cheeky penis-related selfie but who voted ruthlessly against any manner of large scale government waste, mindful of his duties to the taxpayer?

Or one who was absolutely punctilious in his adherence to the letter of the law, resolutely dull in his personal life, and scrupulous in being seen at all times to do the right thing, but who, in the Commons, was never happier than when spending the public’s money as if it were his own?

Well I know which kind I would prefer and it certainly ain’t Red Ed. Give me a good old fashioned pervert or an honest crook, any day, than a pillar of moral rectitude on a holy mission to spread transparency, fairness and social justice across the land regardless of the cost.