Minutes after 10, you could be forgiven for not noticing, but Nadim Zaharbi was of course

sacked as the chair of the Conservative Party after he was found to have breached the ministerial

code by failing to declare an HMRC investigation into his tax affairs.

Prime Minister's own ethics advisor, Sir Laurie Magnus, found that he had made a serious breach

of the code by not telling officials he was under investigation when he was made Chancellor by Boris Johnson.

He also failed to officially declare that he'd paid a settlement to HMRC for tax avoidance when he was put in the cabinet by Liz Truss, the following September and when Rishi Sunak made him Tory chair and minister without portfolio

in September. So an extraordinary example really of how a right-wing politician can rehabilitate

himself from serious, serious scandal, while Kirstehmah yesterday, you'll recall, was under attack

for working for free to abolish the death penalty in former colonies.

We use a phrase client journalism quite a lot on this program, but there are days when the

phrase doesn't seem to go far enough. And Zahawi's just one of them, attempting not only

to gloss over his own scandalous past, recent past, but also to point fingers at others, calling in his conversation

with Nick earlier, calling for the former head of the post office to devote the rest of her life to

charitable works. I'll say again, he was sacked for breaching the ministerial code, sacked by the

current iteration of the Tory party, almost unsackable cohort of charlatans and chances. And yet he managed,

perhaps uniquely actually, apart from, of course, Suella Braverman, he managed to actually

get sacked. Even Dominic Raab would have hung on if he hadn't promised to resign in the event

of being found to be a bully because he was then found to be a bully. So he had to resign. But he would have tried to hung on if he hadn't promised to resign in the event of being found to be a bully,

because he was then found to be a bully, so he had to resign.

But he would have tried to hang on if Kirstama hadn't pushed him into making that promise.

So someone sacked for a breach of the ministerial code is able, through a combination of cynicism and opportunism,

to use the Horizon Post Office scandal to cast themselves as a moral crusader. And that is a beautiful indication of how insane this story has now become.

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