There's selling out, and there's Selling Out

What do old politicians do? If you're Ted Heath, you sit on the back benches making rude comments about your successor's failings. John Major watched cricket and joined the boards of various disgusting corporations. Tony Blair is making millions of pounds lecturing dodgy business groups on the joys of rightwing economics, torture and saying your prayers.

Bah. Amateurs. If you're a faded pol - perhaps the deputy Prime Minister - with a recent history of being the left's Judas goat, allowing your master to institute the laissez-faire policy of an economy based on totally unrestrained personal, banking and national debt (while invading every country with sand), you want to announce your availability with a bit of a fanfare.

What you want to do is appear in an advert for dubious personal loans. That'll show them you're principled, uncorruptible, proletarian and proud of your decades of public service. Oh, and cheap.