"I'm a bit like a sort of cab for hire," Stephen Byers explained to the fake lobbyist whom he had never met before and whose credentials he had not checked. "I still get a lot of confidential information because I'm still linked to No 10," he boasted. His fee, the former transport secretary explained, was "usually between £3,000 and £5,000 a day". He had a particular "trump card" to offer clients in the shape of his friendship with Lord Mandelson. He had also, he pointed out, done serious business for a major client with Lord Adonis at the transport department – "We sort of worked together, basically the way he was comfortable doing it." If that was not enough and if his clients were interested, "we could have a word with Tony".
Mr Byers was not alone in his unguarded enthusiasm when the pretend lobbyists called out of the blue. Patricia Hewitt explained that, for a fee of £3,000 a day, she could help "a client who needs a particular regulation removed, then we can often package that up". Geoff Hoon, saying he was "looking forward to ... something that, frankly, makes money", agreed that he would sit on an advisory board for £3,000 a day too. Other MPs and peers also answered the invitation, including the Labour MP Margaret Moran, who last year had to pay back £22,500 in falsely claimed expenses but who now offered to start work "within a couple of weeks". The Conservative MP Julie Kirkbride, however, thought the lobbyists did not seem genuine – she should know, since her MP husband now is one – and pulled out of her appointment, warning the Tory whips about what was going on. Smart woman.
Not for the first time, Mr Byers was less shrewd. As a result, he stands exposed today as both stupid and sleazy and, most important of all, as an embarrassment to the progressive politics that he still professes. Stupid because he ought to be sharp and experienced enough to have seen through the cash-for-influence sting that was mounted against him by the Sunday Times and Channel 4's programme Dispatches. Sleazy because he has no business – if that's the word – offering his services as a lobbyist at a daily rate that most people in his North Tyneside constituency do not come near earning in a month, while occupying a seat in parliament.
Whether such comments had come from a Labour MP, or from a former cabinet member subject to the ministerial code, or simply from any politician in an era already massively sensitised to parliamentary sleaze, the things Mr Byers told his undercover interviewer are shameful. Has he learned nothing from the events of the past couple of years? If Mr Byers was not leaving parliament already, there would be a case for deselecting him. His only defence, a threadbare one, is that he did not actually do what he offered and that he realised within 24 hours that he was an idiot. But Mr Byers is not just an idiot. He is a disgraced political figure.
There may be more to this than meets the eye. The sting's targets were mostly Blairites – or, more accurately, anti-Brownites. Ms Hewitt and Mr Hoon led the abortive January coup against Gordon Brown. Mr Byers has long been a hate figure in Brownite circles. There is a familiar mafioso feel of scores being settled in the traditional manner about the whole affair. The Sunday Times was undoubtedly read with far more glee than grief in Downing Street yesterday.
Yet Mr Byers and his colleagues have only themselves to blame this time. They should not have been so greedy. They should not have been so disconnected from the values for which not just their party but the British people stand. As centrist Labour MPs, they weakened the moral standing of centrism and made it harder for centrists to resist the inevitable attacks that their conduct will provoke from the left. Mr Byers let himself down, and that is his problem. But he also let the progressive cause down, and that's our problem too.