Labour promised to clean up politics. When does it start?

Every house has its own smell. You learn this as a child, going to your first sleepovers. You walk in and immediately notice that something is hanging in the air, which you can’t quite put into words but can’t ignore either.

At some point, this will make you wonder if your house has its own smell as well. It would stand to reason that it does but, try as you might, you just won’t be able to spot it. You’ve been in there too long, and you’ve never known anything else.

A similar dynamic can often be found in Westminster, because it is a tightly knit, claustrophobic world, and it often feels cut off from the rest of Britain. There are some things that are okay in SW1 and they aren’t outside of it, but no-one ever really brings them up.

These aren’t secrets people are consciously keeping out of the public eye. Instead, they’ve become so used to their odd and ethically dubious habits that they no longer see them as such. If questioned, they may even bristle at the suggestion that they’ve done anything wrong.

Earlier this week, at Labour’s conference in Liverpool, a number of ministers bristled. They were asked in interviews and on panels to account for the copious freebies they’ve received over the years. Why exactly did they need the clothes, glasses, gig tickets, open bars at their birthdays and heaven knows what else? What did the people with the chequebooks expect in exchange for those gifts? Hell, couldn’t they just buy all those things themselves, with their hefty salaries?

I watched Lucy Powell, the leader of the House of Commons, grow combative when talking about it. Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Treasury, was smoother but still obviously annoyed. Other journalists saw other MPs talk about it, and the post-match consensus seems to be that they cannot tell what they’ve done wrong.

One explanation on offer is that Keir Starmer wasn’t born and bred in SW1, and so sees the world in the way non–political people would. There are rules and if we obey them we will be fine. Politicians are allowed to receive certain gifts as long as they declare them, and so there can be no wrong-doing if the gifts were legal and declared.

This assessment is correct in theory but flawed in practice, as Parliament isn’t like any other organisation. MPs can get away with things others wouldn’t, but must be especially careful in areas where regular professionals needn’t worry. That’s the game they’ve agreed to play.

It is a good theory, but not quite the whole story. Voters are currently angry at the government for behaving like spoiled children requiring frequent, expensive presents, and that is because they are now being told about it.

Journalists have always known about corporate hospitality, but they never really saw it as a story. Transparency rules mean that it was all out in the open anyway and, crucially, they – we – also got our fair share of wining, dining and goodie bags.

If everyone is at it, then surely no-one is. This accidental omerta held for a long time, but eventually broke a few weeks ago.

It started with Lord Alli bankrolling the Starmers’ lifestyle, then it kept going – because there are still few policies to discuss, and Fleet Street loves nothing more than a shocking story that runs and runs.

Crucially, the main weapon at media’s disposal is Labour’s insistence, for months and years while in opposition, that the Conservatives were rotten to the core while they were white as snow. “Elect us and we’ll clean up politics”, they told the country at the time, carefully placing Chekov’s gun on the table.

The country listened and elected them, and now has the temerity to expect the party to live up to the higher standards it had promised them. Gun, meet foot.

Ministers aren’t entirely wrong when they point out that they have done nothing wrong, but it’s irrelevant. Looking irked and arguing that they have been transparent means nothing, if what they have been transparent about is something the public finds distasteful.

It may be unfair that successive Parliaments could get away with something this Parliament may have to do away with, but again, that’s the nature of the game.

For a long time, MPs could merrily turn up sozzled in the Commons and make entirely incoherent speeches, until they couldn’t. They could sleep with the 21-year-old intern without anyone batting an eyelid, until they couldn’t. They could cook the books and get the taxpayer to pay for their cushy living situation, until they couldn’t. It all seemed normal and fine, until it didn’t.

Because they make the laws other people must live by, politicians can forget that they, too, must sometimes obey rules they did not choose themselves. That’s the deal they made when they entered Parliament.

Free frocks were fine for a while, but maybe they aren’t anymore. There’s not much they can do about it. That’s life.