Caesar's wife? Puh-leeze

Because it is a fact that it is very easy to construct a simple narrative out of sleaze - They're All Bad People And Something Has To Change - but it is less easy to demonstrate that the voting public is massively energised by these revelations. People who comment on political blogs are not normal voters. The Speccie is right to argue that Conway's transgressions are of a different, more bitter flavour than Hain's, and are thus damaging to Cameron. But how damaging, exactly? With the economy slowing and house prices slipping and teenagers knifing each other on buses, exactly how much do individual voters care about this stuff? The Standard and Andrew Gilligan have been slinging pretty well-researched mud at Ken Livingstone for months, and the result? He's still ahead in the polls.

We've said it before, we'll say it again: people don't trust politicians. They don't like politicians. When politicians do sleazy things, people roll their eyes and have their prejudices confirmed. But there is also a bedrock of belief that, all things being equal, British politics is probably a bit less sleazy than politics in other countries. Only in a world where both parties are identical in all regards does sleaze become a significant electoral issue. It's perhaps sad, but we think Gordon Brown's bizarre grimace-smile is going to sway more voters than Hain's dodgy accounting.