ONE presumes Labour expects voters to be impressed by its integrity when, despite protesting their innocence, ministers Peter Mandelson and Geoffrey Robinson fall on their swords over a fishy £300,000-plus home loan from one to t' other.

But what are we to make of the party's supposed high-mindedness when, in Europe, its MEPs let the EU Commission off the hook despite members of it being allegedly involved in such huge fiddles and favouritism that the money in the Mandelson affair looks like small change?

For here we have up to £6 billion of the Commission's £60 billion budget lost or stolen year after year and Euro MPs out for the scalps of two of the most implicated, former French Prime Minister Edith Cresson and Spaniard Manuel Marin, thanks to a censure motion put down by Pauline Green, leader of the Labour MEPs in the European Parliament.

What happened? A cop-out.

Not only did only 232 out of 626 MEPs back the no-confidence vote, 74 did not even bother to turn up for it.

Labour's lot, however, voted against censure, having seen their own motion calling for this withdrawn.

What caused such a somersault?

If only Mrs Green would explain or substantiate her view that, having been let off the hook, the 20-strong unelected Commission - the EU's executive, no less - has been given a "kick in the backside."

Lacking such an explanation, I can only conclude that Mrs Green being videod the night before the let-off vote laughing and drinking in a hotel with Commission president Jacques Santer was a terrifying prelude for him to his backside being so firmly booted.

It's a sign that our notoriously snouts-in-trough MEPs are not inclined to sack the drivers of the gravy train they themselves are aboard.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.