Has Honour gone the same way as Prudence?

Gordon Brown once had a special flame called Prudence. She was mentioned in nearly every speech he made about the economy and in his erstwhile condemnation of greed. That was before he found his moral compass faced more directions than the planet Earth could cope with. Then Prudence was given the heave-ho. Honour is another trusty female who comes into regular contact with parliamentarians. She is there to make them behave themselves in a self-controlling way. However, she too has been violated recently, and not just by the men! Both Honour and Prudence are having a hard time.

Now we are to have candidates at this election being urged to declare details of other jobs they may have, property assets and their tax status. This is at the recommendation of a watchdog (without an electric collar I hear). So when it comes to wondering if we are electing honourable people the answer is propably not. Nobody trusts anybody these days and there is precious little doubt as to why that is. Corruption and seediness are all around us. What we will have before us are a collection of highly vetted, deeply scrutinised, morally flawless paragons of political trite and trivia. All will be "on message", none will have the slightest idea of how to respond to a question for which there is no cribbed answer. It will be ghastly.

I fear we are throwing the political baby out with the bathwater. Sending your old bathwater down the plughole is one thing, but being asked to sit in a bath full of disinfectant is quite another. I want my parliamentary representative to be a spirited advocate not a sterile apparatchik.