A reasonable barometer to measure how much an elected politician "worked for you" is to track their employment history after leaving politics. They may indeed have worked for you to an extent, but were they also – you know – looking at a decent wee number later on?

Certainly, this doesn’t of itself infer any wrongdoing. A politician’s career is uncertain and unpredictable where only a very few can be certain they’ll still be in this sector a decade hence. Yet the privilege of serving their constituency also comes with a number of advantages that can eventually be turned into material gain.

For an anointed 10 years or so you they have access to some of the richest and most influential people in the UK and across the world. They’re also privy to information and conversations which global conglomerates pay lobbying firms millions of pounds annually to annexe.

Need your CEO to get in front of a visiting delegation from an African nation with large mineral deposits underneath their soil? And those buildings wrecked in your civil war, Excellency, won’t just build themselves. Tarquin: don’t we have that former minister of the Crown on our books? Let’s see if he can set up a meeting. Tell him we’ve got the box next to the royals at Wimbledon this year if that’ll help seal the deal.

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Geoff Hoon, the former Labour Defence Secretary, was once caught on undercover camera admitting baldly that he wanted to translate his knowledge and contacts into something that “frankly makes money”.

They’ll have spent much of their time having to bow and scrape to the spivs and racketeers of global finance seeking to secure some........

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