George Orwell’s Animal Farm is the sturdiest of political satires for good reason. At the end of the account of a failed revolution by the porcine revolutionaries against their human exploiters, the proletarian pigs watch their leader doing self-serving deals with the ancien regime – and can no longer distinguish the new powers from the old. “Already it was impossible to say which was which.”

In Opposition, Labour had an eagle eye for mercantile Conservatives’ dependency on monied friends to enhance their lifestyles. This approach has not, however, fared so well since Labour took office.

The latest senior figure to choke on a family silver spoon is the Treasury minister Tulip Siddiq. She is reported to have lived in (at least) two properties at different times, gifted to her family by allies of her aunt Sheikh Hasina, who ran an autocratic regime in Bangladesh until her fall from power last August, leaving a trail of accusations of embezzlement and human rights abuses in her wake.

Siddiq cannot be blamed for that – although she has tended to bowdlerise her aunt’s record in interviews, citing homely advice she was given about the responsibilities of power – and her family closeness. There seems to have been little curiosity on her part as to the worst side of her famous relative’s record and alleged complicity (or worse) in human rights abuses that resulted in hundreds being killed by the regime.

Awkwardly, for a minister charged with rooting out financial misdoings, she has also been the........

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