The film series in which Led By Donkeys exposes MPs who are happy to neglect their first duty – to their constituents – for a second job with a (fake) foreign firm has won huge public interest since its trailer debuted yesterday.

But let’s remember one thing while we’re looking at Tory MPs trying to get their noses in the trough:

Labour’s leader is no better.

In 2017, Keir Starmer was blocked from taking a second job with law firm Mishcon de Reya – by then-party leader Jeremy Corbyn (a man with better principles than all the MPs mentioned in the Led By Donkeys research, put together).

Nowadays, it seems he likes to say he was only “in discussion” with that firm – as though it doesn’t mean he was talking with its people about working for them. Watch him get contradicted by a Sky News reporter here:

I wonder how Sky News will be treated by a future Labour government, considering the way Starmer has abused and persecuted dissenters in his own party?

A huge problem with MPs having second jobs – besides the fact that it reduces their work for constituents to a part-time hobby – is that it makes them employees of organisations that may (and many do) wish to influence politics in the UK. But that isn’t the only way it can be done.

Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, has said the party will end the scandal of MPs’ second jobs – as though that will be the end of the corruption.

What about the donations she (along with other Labour MPs) takes from pro-Israel lobbyist Trevor Chinn? As matters stand, there is no reason they shouldn’t take his money – but what are they obliged to do in return?

Here’s a ray of hope, though: fortunately some MPs still remember the reason they were elected to Parliament, and are prepared to point out the failings of their fellow representatives. Here’s Zarah Sultana:

Needless to say, she has been sidelined by Starmer.

Another backbencher, sidelined by Starmer, is Richard Burgon – whose Private Members’ Bill to ban MPs from having second jobs is currently going through the Parliamentary process:

He has spoken forcefully about the issue in the House of Commons:

How many of you expect this excellent legislation to be filibustered out of existence by the usual Tory suspects?

None of this should be allowed to override the main point of the Led By Donkeys exposure, though – that sitting MPs are demanding huge amounts of money to shill for commercial interests while their constituents suffer in poverty and hunger.

Let’s have a look at some of the figures:

It’s corruption fuelled by greed, pure and simple.

And the fact is that it will continue because there is no way to compel MPs to stop.

Or will the tide of public opinion be enough to make these avaricious pigs lift their snouts from the trough and do the right thing – for fear of being ousted at the next election?

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