Pygmy politicians give permission to despoil

What we want to be told is not which Labour ministers or officials knew about Mr Abrahams's donation to the party, but rather what favours he might have hoped to win in return. In the cash-for-honours affair, this was never in doubt: the donors wanted peerages.

In the case of a property developer, it is hardly surprising - even if there is no evidence - that the public should draw the conclusion that he might have been looking for planning favours.

This is the area where the public interest is most worryingly at stake, because profit-driven planning permissions can give to moneymen a power to do terminal damage to our national habitat.

In my own neighbourhood, as in so many others across the country, there is cause for suspicion. Planning permissions have gone through on

What shocks is how little it takes to persuade officials
and politicians to break the law

an unprecedented scale: for a motorway service station within a mile of our home, for a new massive industrial incinerator with frightening health dangers, and, to add insult to injury, for yet another Tesco.

In none of these cases can there be any justification other than the greed of the supporting companies who expect to make large fortunes.

What shocks, too, is how little it takes - judging by the current scandal - to persuade officials and politicians to break the law. The Donald Trump kettle of fish is different. Nothing illegal there; just another case of big money trying to vandalise - so far unsuccessfully - a precious part of Britain's habitat, for profit.

The reality that emerges is very ugly. Increasingly moneymen call the tunes to which the pygmy politicians dance. It is this - not the fate of Gordon Brown - that is on the scale of a Shakespearian tragedy.