The first editor I worked for was a wise old man. When we cub reporters handed him a story, he would look at us over the top of his half-moon spectacles and ask: "Should I be interested?" I found myself asking the same question when confronted with Angus MacNeil's three-on-a-bed fumble with two girls half his age, while his wife was heavily pregnant.

When I saw the story, I had just been reading about newscaster Fiona Bruce modelling for picture stories in Jackie while she was a schoolgirl. She said of her real-life teenage experiences: "There was a numbers code. One was a chaste kiss; two, a snog; three, hands under the jumper and so on." I found myself wondering whether passion and alcohol had fuelled the honourable member for the Western Isles to number four (since he assures us he didn't get to five). Then I caught myself. Should I be interested? Absolutely not.

Quite apart from the sense of rummaging through someone else's grubby laundry, the story read like a tired old repeat - with MacNeil as the repressed Presbyterians' answer to Alan Clark and hisinfamous "coven".

As revelation follows upon exposure, it grows ever harder to be shocked by political scandal. We have waded through the confessions and indiscretions of John Major, Paddy Ashdown, Jack McConnell, Boris Johnson, Robin Cook, John Prescott, David Blunkett, Michael Portillo, David Mellor, Tim Yeo, Cecil Parkinson - how far back should I go - Lloyd George?

I have probably omitted as many as I have remembered, for their number seems legion. These are just the British ones and they seem tame set against Bill Clinton's shenanigans in the Oval Office, which in turn are no match for the relentless cavortings of Jack Kennedy. Didn't Kennedy allegedly confide to a bemused Harold Macmillan that if he didn't have a woman every day he got a headache?

Since I can't imagine that Angus MacNeil will be the last MP to break the 11th commandment - Don't get caught - I have decided the only way to approach the polling booth from now on is to assume that every candidate (with the exception of the famously innocent Tommy Sheridan) has a grubby little sexual secret, and to ignore it.

As far as I can see, the politicians accused of scandal often earn a certain cachet. They are Jack the Lad, a bit of a Sly Dog. Just look at the infamous Clark. What we remember about him is less the detail and variety of his physical gymnastics than the stylishness of his response to an accusatory and judgmental press. It could be summed up in a word: "So?" Meanwhile, his wife was throwing crockery at his head.

For it is the politicians' wives who really suffer. They are left emotionally stripped in the spotlight. It is these private individuals who have their attractions examined and compared with those of the mistress, the boyfriend or the one-night-stand. It is they who have to confront betrayal with a long lens focused on their pain. How often have we seen them standing by their man, like David Mellor's wife, blank-eyed, with a fixed smile? How can they really appraise their marriage while exposed, centre stage?

The "other women" don't fare much better, as MacNeil's teenage "fiddlers" are about to discover. What benefit will it be to musicstudents Judie Morrison andCatriona Watt to bring the opprobrium of the Western Isles down on Angus MacNeil, when in the process they show themselves as drunk and willing participants in his late-night frolicks?

Judie Morrison's father is a Church of Scotland minister and chaplain to the Queen. He won't welcome this publicity. Nor, I doubt, will Catriona Watt's family. The girls were fresh out of school when they canoodled with the then 34-year-old MP but technically, at 17 and 18, they were consenting adults. They have been seduced once by a politician and a second time by the press.

What of their revelations? Should we be concerned about what our elected representatives get up to in bed, so long as it is legal? Does it stop them doing their day job properly? The evidence would suggest the answers are no and no again. Angus MacNeil may have behaved like a duplicitous creep, but he was still sharp enough to spot that selling peerages is against the law.

This revelation about his private life may call into question whether he is a nice man, or whether he was a nice man on that one night, in that snapshot in time. One look at his pretty, unsuspecting wife would suggest not. But how can we weigh his character in the balance when we know so little else about him?

Most of us know only this sorry tale and his precocious David and Goliath sling-shot at the heart of government. It, too, might have been a reckless act. It was, however, an effective one. It was also important for a wider constituency than the one he directly represents. There is another level of scandal that does and should take our attention; and he has highlighted a possible instance of it.

If a politician is involved in sexual activity with someone underage or unwilling, their careers should be finished. If they are caught taking cash for questions, with their hand in the till, illegally representing a vested interest, setting fire to a hotel, committing perjury, creating a deliberately dodgy dossier or selling peerages, they don't deserve a cross against their name come polling day. That kind of impropriety is inconsistent with public office.

There are many who will contend that a man who cheats on his wife cannot be called honest. Actually, I think that in a broader sense he can be. In most men - and in most women - there is a divide between sexuality and honesty. There are thousands of people who in a moment of emotional vulnerability will have cheated on their partner but who would never under any circumstances steal or defraud. We might prefer our elected representatives to be virtuous men and women who are as honest in the sexual arena as they are in the financial one. The evidence suggests that we have Hobson's choice.

Hidden scandals were once used to blackmail some into a greaterpublic betrayal. It was called the honey trap. Now MPs are more likely to be targeted deliberately by ambitious young women or men in search of publicity, or cash for a kiss and tell, or both. It is the threat of this sort of embarrassment that keeps many bright and able people from putting themselves forward for public office. If they have lived anything other than a monkish existence and they value their privacy, they steer clear. We are all the losers.

If the electorate takes a view that sexual indiscretion with a willing adult is a private matter, the kiss and tell market will shrivel and the pool of would-be politicians should expand. It might even do us voters some good, for it is seldom genuine outrage that sells papers when this sort of story breaks. If the media's function is to inform and entertain, I would argue that sexual scandal usually falls into the latter category. We aren't a high-minded readership saddened and outraged by a two-faced representative. Aren't we really just relishing a lip-smacking scandal and a glorious excuse for self-righteous complacency? If so, should we be interested?

Add Comment Posted by: Alasdair, Highlands on 11:01pm Mon 9 Apr 07 I think you should amend your otherwise very good article to take into account the girls' side of the story Colette. Looks like they were completely stitched up by the Sunday Mail. Go onto the Stornoway Gazette website. Alex salmond has reportedly said that this is part of a smear campaign against Angus MacNeil. The Herald's coverage on Monday was a disgrace. This article begins to balance it out. I think you should amend your otherwise very good article to take into account the girls' side of the story Colette. Looks like they were completely stitched up by the Sunday Mail. Go onto the Stornoway Gazette website. Alex salmond has reportedly said that this is part of a smear campaign against Angus MacNeil. The Herald's coverage on Monday was a disgrace. This article begins to balance it out.Quote Report this post Posted by: George, California on 1:50am today In a disordered society in which sex is the advertising industry's weapon of choice to sell its masters' products, it is hardly surprising that impressionable girls can be semi-seduced by a young, drunken politician on the make. With the man in question possessing little or no honor regarding his wife in his commission of adultery in a community which appears to retain some vestiges of Christianity he can probably be likened to the present upwardly politically mobile mayor of San Francisco, who, after attempting to promote the oxymoron of "same sex marriage" in that beautiful city, proceeded to seduce the wife of one of his friends--who just happened to be a principal political advisor. And then checked himself into rehab.as his personal form of mea culpa sans responsibility. Do the Western Isles have their variant on Delancey Street and Mimi Silbert? Or would he have to go to the intellectually superior Edinburgh? And are those relativistic moral concepts called "tolerance" and "non-judgementalism " as alive and well as they are in the Golden State? In a disordered society in which sex is the advertising industry's weapon of choice to sell its masters' products, it is hardly surprising that impressionable girls can be semi-seduced by a young, drunken politician on the make. With the man in question possessing little or no honor regarding his wife in his commission of adultery in a community which appears to retain some vestiges of Christianity he can probably be likened to the present upwardly politically mobile mayor of San Francisco, who, after attempting to promote the oxymoron of "same sex marriage" in that beautiful city, proceeded to seduce the wife of one of his friends--who just happened to be a principal political advisor. And then checked himself into rehab.as his personal form of mea culpa sans responsibility. Do the Western Isles have their variant on Delancey Street and Mimi Silbert? Or would he have to go to the intellectually superior Edinburgh? And are those relativistic moral concepts called "tolerance" and "non-judgementalism " as alive and well as they are in the Golden State? Quote Report this post Posted by: Anndra, Ireland on 8:57am today Collette, you obviously are interested, as am I, or else we'd be writing/contemplating a different topic. Your article is good, and most importantly of all it suggests that politicians' shannanigans of the 'legal' sexual kind are quite rightly a matter for them to judge with their own affected family. It bears no relation (pardon the pun) to their activity as a politician. Politics, when mixed with the ever expectant demands of the religious fraternity, do not make for good bed-fellows. It is the politicians frequent moral high-ground stance on issues such as marrigae, ethics, and morality in then their collective interest in trading of back-handers for peerages, formula one smoking advertising, p.f.i/p.p.p contracts, computer systems for governement agencies, arms deals with the Saudis, legal loopholes for tax-evaders...the list is endless...that makes their hypocrisy so crystal clear.If the political fraternity were to be an honest bunch, (incidentally, cheating on your partner is not an honest act ...you defraud everytime you check over your shoulder for fear of being recognised, check in to motel/hotel rooms under a false name..say you're working late at the 'office' ? orifice..don't start to excuse the deceit of the activity, Collette) then we, the electorate would take them for what they are, not for the hollow-shells they proport to be. The girls involved in this situation have hopefully learned that the world outside of the Western Isles is a murky place, and 'street-wise' is something they will do well to become when dealing with people of both genders bearing gifts, where politics are concerned.In the world of the opportunistic liar, there is no such thing as a free-lunch. All institutions have within their offices such opportunistic individuals, whether it is politics, education, health-care, religion, industry, even the local whist drive! Persons in positions of power abuse that power, and the dependent, young, naive, or desperate are their collective prey.Vote for what the politics of the party are, and preferably within a voting system which permits proportional representation. Safeguard against the pre-election promise being as real as the one made to the girls in Stornoway by the journo in Glasgow.My concern is with the feelings of Mrs. MacNeil, and the impact on her off-spring. Perhaps she'd be less undermined by being single, respected, and proud of herself than married and wondering when, not if, her hubby is away to get the next round of drinks in.Sliante! Collette, you obviously are interested, as am I, or else we'd be writing/contemplating a different topic.

Your article is good, and most importantly of all it suggests that politicians' shannanigans of the 'legal' sexual kind are quite rightly a matter for them to judge with their own affected family. It bears no relation (pardon the pun) to their activity as a politician. Politics, when mixed with the ever expectant demands of the religious fraternity, do not make for good bed-fellows. It is the politicians frequent moral high-ground stance on issues such as marrigae, ethics, and morality in then their collective interest in trading of back-handers for peerages, formula one smoking advertising, p.f.i/p.p.p contracts, computer systems for governement agencies, arms deals with the Saudis, legal loopholes for tax-evaders...the list is endless...that makes their hypocrisy so crystal clear.

If the political fraternity were to be an honest bunch, (incidentally, cheating on your partner is not an honest act ...you defraud everytime you check over your shoulder for fear of being recognised, check in to motel/hotel rooms under a false name..say you're working late at the 'office' ? orifice..don't start to excuse the deceit of the activity, Collette) then we, the electorate would take them for what they are, not for the hollow-shells they proport to be.

The girls involved in this situation have hopefully learned that the world outside of the Western Isles is a murky place, and 'street-wise' is something they will do well to become when dealing with people of both genders bearing gifts, where politics are concerned.

In the world of the opportunistic liar, there is no such thing as a free-lunch. All institutions have within their offices such opportunistic individuals, whether it is politics, education, health-care, religion, industry, even the local whist drive! Persons in positions of power abuse that power, and the dependent, young, naive, or desperate are their collective prey.

Vote for what the politics of the party are, and preferably within a voting system which permits proportional representation. Safeguard against the pre-election promise being as real as the one made to the girls in Stornoway by the journo in Glasgow.

This is cache, read story here