Oh, all right then, I'll write about Liam Fox, well, almost…

I'm generally uninterested in political scandals. They are a substitute for proper politics, which I think are enjoyed by political reporters far more than they are by voters. To this day, I do not understand the Westland Affair which led to the resignation of Michael Heseltine, and I was working at the House of Commons at the time, surrounded by gossip on the subject. I think my brain just glazes over as soon as I hear the words 'Ministerial Code'.

I have tried, for some years now, to point out that the MPs' expenses scandal was wholly selective in its victims. I don't know if all those who had actually committed criminal offences were prosecuted ( I suspect not). But it wasn't what was illegal that mattered. It was what was legal. If you look at the much wider question, of naked greed, lawfully pursued, some MPs were utterly destroyed and others sailed through the storm unruffled and not even damp.

Some of you will recall the account I gave of David Cameron's meeting with his Witney constituents about his expenses claim, here. I still think it astonishing that this event was attended by only three national newspaper journalists (me, Stephen Glover of the Daily Mail and Ann Treneman of 'The Times') given the scale of the story, and the fact that Mr Cameron was widely expected to be our next Prime Minister at the time. No national broadcaster had its own equipment or staff there (Witney is 70 miles from London). I only knew about the meeting because it had been mentioned in the local newspaper, the Oxford Mail and I live just outside Mr Cameron's constituency. I had then mentioned it to Stephen Glover one day in the lift at Associated Newspapers, who also lives in Oxford. At that time I had assumed that it was already widely known in Fleet Street. It wasn't.  I believe Ms Treneman had been alerted at the last minute by her newsdesk, who had been called by a Witney taxpayer to let them know. 

When I tell normal people (i.e. those not obsessed with the news) the story of Mr Cameron's generous (to himself) housing claims, they are amazed by the information. They know about the wisteria and the chimney (giggle, giggle, how trivial and silly!) but they are completely unaware of the scale of his claims for mortgage interest, among the highest made by any Member of Parliament. If the media flock had seized on this and run with it (Millionaire MP gets you to pay his Mortgage Interest' 'Millionaire MP's taxpayer-subsidised country home' etc) I don't think Mr Cameron would now be Prime Minister.

Why didn't this story ever take off? Well, you will have to guess, but regular readers here, and readers of my book 'The Cameron Delusion' will know my views on the flock mentality of the bulk of British political journalists (from this I very much except my excellent colleagues on the Mail on Sunday, who diligently pursue their own stories and are not part of any flock).  Sometimes they bleat wildly and charge around the field like mad. At other times they gaze soulfully at you as they chomp their jaws,  and refuse to get excited. Peter Oborne, another non-flock journalist,  has also written very interestingly about this, and recently accurately described most political journalists as 'courtiers'.

So scandals can be, and are, selective. And the increasingly tight rules applied to MPs and Ministers are designed to treat them as employees (of whom, exactly? This is one of the most interesting questions in our constitution) rather than independent men and women.

It's a cliché to say that Winston Churchill or David Lloyd George could never have survived the sort of scrutiny politicians now face. But it's a cliché because it is true. And people really should work out the implications of that.  Which would we rather – that politicians had faintly dodgy friends who bankrolled them through periods in the wilderness, or that they were meek, pliable employees of the executive who never dared to speak an independent word?

And if they keep their private lives private, and treat their fellow creatures decently and kindly, is it in our interests to destroy them? I've grown increasingly tired of the scandal approach to politics, not least because I've been involved in it in the past.

When I was a reporter in Washington DC, I got marginally involved in the 'Troopergate' affair, in which Bill Clinton was accused by a rather sweet young lady called Paula Jones of, well, pursuing her round a Little Rock hotel room with his underpants off.  I spent a long time on the phone with Miss Jones, much of it almost doubled up with laughter at her entirely believable descriptions of the then Governor of Arkansas in his semi-naked state. I was never after able to watch a State of the Union address in the same way.

My then newspaper was quite interested in this stuff.  My hopes of concentrating entirely on higher things during my Washington DC posting had been shattered when I found myself living in a rather basic motel in the pleasant town of Manassas, Virginia (scene of two major Civil War battles), covering the appallingly explicit trial of Mrs Lorena Bobbitt , who had removed her husband's manhood with a kitchen knife. This event was obviously interesting, though I think a few years ago we would have hesitated to report it.  Newspapers, as I so often say, stay independent by being commercially successful. They have to follow public taste to some extent. Had I been at home, I'd never have reported on any such thing, as the newsdesk would reasonably and rightly have assumed I was the wrong person for such a job,  but a foreign-based reporter has to do everything that turns up (I once found myself pursuing Princess Diana around the District of Columbia too. She was escorted by a car prominently marked with the words 'Secret Service', a thing that has always made me smile).

And sexual scandal – of the type involving Mr Clinton - is interesting, much more interesting than financial scandal, or conflict-of-interest scandal.  But I have since reflected that Bill Clinton may have invaded the, er, privacy of quite a lot of women, some more willing than others – but he never invaded Iraq.  And which is more important?

Likewise, many of Anthony Blair's Cabinet fell to the scythe of scandal – David Blunkett, Peter Mandelson, and others I now forget. But the really scandalous members of that government, Mr Blair and Mr Brown themselves, remained in office throughout.

What about Liam Fox? I'm not a Thatcherite and find his brand of conservatism unappealing and sterile. I think his review of our defences has been mismanaged and wrongly directed, even on the assumption that most of these cuts were really needed. I don't like his taste in birthday-party shirts.  I've had two conversations with him in my life, the latter a couple of weeks ago when he chatted to me about a recent flight he'd had in an RAF Typhoon jet.  I've heard gossip and rumours about him as I have about many politicians, but I wouldn't pass it on because I have no idea if it's true, or just the usual mildly malicious tittle-tattle that requires no evidence and may easily be wholly false.

What's important is the government of the country. Scandal, in which the occasional minister is forced to resign, is a substitute for our lost power to remove a government and replace it with a different one. If we remove a government now, we get the same one with different faces stuck on it.