AS parliamentary sleaze-buster Sir Gordon Downey's long-awaited report into the cash-for-questions scandal delivers guilty verdicts on ex-minister Neil Hamilton and four other former Tory MPs, a sigh of relief must also permeate the stink that hangs over the Conservative benches in the Commons.

For decimated though the Tory ranks at Westminster are after the general election, they would surely be far thinner still if this report had come out before the election - as many insisted it should - and not afterwards.

The lesson that must now be heeded by every politician is that sleaze is deadly - and that brazenness with it is deadlier still, as the epitome of both, the disgraced Mr Hamilton, seems reluctant even yet to learn.

Britain's parliament is probably among the least corrupt in the world, but the poison that sleaze has spread has damaged all politicians in the voters' view.

Rightly, Tony Blair has vowed no mercy for Labour MPs who stray.

And with the deep taint that Tory integrity has suffered from it, the party's new leader William Hague also ought to be mindful that not the slightest hint of sleaze - moral or pecuniary - is attached to his team.

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