Boris Johnson treats checks and balances with contempt

THE FACTSMPMP are damning. Owen Paterson, a former Tory Cabinet minister now on the backbenches, was paid £9,000 ($12,700) a month for consulting work by two companies, one and a half times his parliamentary salary. And, sure enough, he earned his keep by lobbying ministers and officials on their behalf. The commissioner for standards, an independent officer, concluded that he had brought Parliament into disrepute.Its cross-party standards committee recommended a 30-day suspension. But on November 3rd, in a scheme cooked up barely 24 hours earlier, Tory s voted, under instruction from the government, by creating a new committee to examine the way s are overseen. Mr Paterson’s case will thus be reconsidered. It was as if an appellate court had found a guilty verdict legally correct but unpalatable, and decided to change the law rather than pass sentence.