IN THEORY, nobody should be that shocked or surprised by the latest revelations of Tory sleaze.
The party of big business would, after all, be expected to reflect the values of big business - the grasping corruption, the ruthless profit-seeking and the secretive decision-making networks that are an integral part of the 'free market' system. Business chiefs who funnel money into the Tory Party will obviously expect a few favours in return.
As long as this is the case, then it is inevitable that every so often evidence of this nether-world will rise to the surface, like methane bubbling from a swamp.
But the disasters that have rocked John Major's cabinet in the past two weeks may have inflicted more fundamental damage on the credibility of the Tories.
As we go to press, two junior ministers have resigned; a vice chair of the Tory Party has resigned from a lobbying company and is under pressure to step down from her party post; a heavy cloud of unanswered questions and improper conduct hangs over the head of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury; and Home Secretary Michael Howard has been quizzed over his links with Harrods owner Mo hamed Al-Fayed.
Soap opera
Perhaps in these post-Dallas days it is the tendency for politics to grow closer to soap-opera which grabs the public's anger and raises indignation. The Tories appear almost like Hollywood stereotypes.
Ordinary people have been given a horrifying glimpse into the jet-set life. style of MPs quietly pocketing lavish consultancy fees, with millionaire ministers routinely scoffing £200 dinners and allegedly 'forgetting' how they paid bills for £1,000-a-night hotel rooms (breakfast extra!).
Equally reminiscent of soap-opera is the outbreak of bitter feuds within the DEFEND Tea at the Ritz? Major shares a cuppa with sleaze row minister Neil Hamilton Tory establishment.
The latest round of revelations broke only because Mohamed Al-Fayed, a frustrated Tory, resented the fact that his £250,000 donation to John Major's election funds and his generous hand-outs of hospitality to what he thought were key players among MPs failed to produce the results he had paid for.
While Al-Fayed has vowed to wreak his revenge, the most significant factor enabling him to do so has been the extent to which sections of the Tory press have now turned against Major, and have willingly taken up this fresh evidence of his incompetence and the rottenness of his March site This was why the heat was brought to bear on Tory vice-chair Angela Rumbold for her key role in a lobbying firm which helped persuade Transport Secretary Brian Mawhinney to site a new Channel Tunnel rail-link station on an obscure area of Kent marshland rather than the favoured site in East London.
Each time a minister bites the dust it creates new political after-shocks for Major: Jonathan Aitken is a Thatcherite right winger, as are Neil Hamilton and Rumbold. The in-fighting within the party and challenges to Major's authority further weaken his ability to control press coverage.
Despite the political repercussions, we should not get the latest 'sleaze' allegations out of perspective.
• In relative terms the consultancy fees, hotel bills, bribes and sweeteners that have preoccupied the press since the 'cash for questions' row first erupted are peanuts.
The Ebbsfleet station project will bring not just a few grand, but tens of millions for developers Blue Circle. And for fifteen years British business as a whole has cashed in handsomely on its investment in the Tory Party, with most of the rewards openly carried out through the front door rather than the back.
Top-paid bosses have shared out tax cuts of £20 billion; Lloyds 'names' have been generously bailed ou to the tune of billions; companies have exploited the barrage of draconian anti-union laws; others are celebrating the deregulation of the labour market and the scrapping of wages councils, allowing them to force pay levels even lower; and City speculators have creamed off billions in profits from privatisation.
Tories are going through a rough patch: but they have remained dedicated to the class they represent. For all John Major's rhetoric about 'one nation' and a 'classless society", they know they are in office to line the pockets of the rich.
Breaking links
But what of Labour? While Major keeps faith with his class, Labour's leadership is in the midst of a turn away from any serious link to Party's historic base in the organised working class.
While class war Tories shamelessly feather their nests and plan more vicious attacks on the unemployed and the entire wellare stale, Labour fosters illusions that 'consensus' and "social justice' can be obtained under capitalism.
TUC and union leaders follow suit, abandoning any effort to co-ordinate resistance, and instead tamely inviting Tory ministers to their conferences.
Labour's policy pronouncements now not only accept the free market of capitalism, but set out to prolong it. Tony Blair wants to scrap Clause Four, which is the last vestige of a commitment to work through parliament for a different type of society.
Working class people are outraged and angry not just at the latest symptoms of Tory sleaze, but at the way they are abused, exploited and repressed by a system of crisis that benefits a wealthy few. Smug, grinning sound-bites from Tony Blair echo none of their anger and frustration.
That's why the fight to defend Clause Four, and for a bold programme of socialist policies to go to the root of a sleazy, brutal system, must be waged throughout the labour movement.