They say that death and taxes are the only certainties in life. But I would add a couple more things to that list. ‘French rioting’ is one. And ‘MPs getting caught trying to make cash on the side’.

This week a campaign group called Led by Donkeys released footage of a sting operation they have been running to try to trap MPs into agreeing to do consultancy work for a South Korean company. You may not be surprised to learn that the company does not actually exist. A number of MPs, however, clearly were.

After some initial flirting, Gavin Williamson did not fall for it, though we can see from the beginning of the interview the horrific sight of him trying to be charming. It is like watching the Demon Headmaster on a date. Others fell right into it, and it is quite instructive who did. They included Matt Hancock and Kwasi Kwarteng.

After some opening niceties Hancock can be seen on video portentously announcing that his daily rate is ‘Ten thousand sterling’ – a fee I suspect he has yet to earn outside of the jungle. Kwarteng, meanwhile, announced that he wouldn’t do anything for less than ten thousand dollars a month. Asked whether he means pounds or dollars, he says: ‘Well pounds, sterling.’ When the ‘interviewer’ says they were looking at a fee of £8,000 to £12,000 a day, Kwarteng magnanimously meets them on this. ‘We’re not a million miles off,’ he says. Kwarteng’s time at the Treasury makes ever more sense as the months go on.

But I don’t wish to be mean to either man. The problem is a perennial one. On the one hand being an MP is a part-time job – as evidenced by the fact that MPs can also become cabinet ministers. On the other hand, there’s probably quite a lot that any sitting MP could do for their constituents before they decide to attend to the needs of sundry South Koreans. Yet both Hancock and Kwarteng are men who are unsure whether they have any future. And this is the moment of maximum danger for any MP.

So long as some hope is dangled before them, it is extraordinary the privations and degradations that MPs are willing to go through. Being a parliamentary private secretary, principal bag-carrier or the like is bearable because the person carrying the bag believes that one day it will be their bag that is being carried. Beyond that, almost all MPs are united in a singular common delusion – which is that someday the nation will call on them. Given the number of prime ministers we have got through in recent years, and the quality of some of them, you might begin to believe that the 650 members of the House of Commons are not on to nothing on this. Perhaps they will indeed all get a crack at the top job in due course.

Still, my point is that ‘hope’ (an unkind person might say ‘ambition’) is the thing that keeps MPs in line. Absent hope from their future and MPs start to do the stupidest things, as might we all. And this is where the idea that the Conservative party is in a1990s situation starts to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

After all, just consider the future that Hancock and Kwarteng doubtless once imagined for themselves. Whether or not they ever thought they were going to get the top job, they must have believed that they could always be players, and that even if they ended up not being in cabinet they would at least parachute on to various boards and rake in money there. It isn’t such an extraordinary delusion. John Major, for instance, is widely regarded – against stiff competition – as one of the worst prime ministers in living memory. But in retirement he has made himself very nicely and quietly rich. You and I might wonder why anyone would want Sir John Major’s name on their company board. But some folks do.

Now imagine who would want Hancock’s name, or Kwarteng’s. As it happens I have nothing against either man – and indeed am rather fond of Kwarteng – but it must have become plain to both in recent months that it would be hard to find a bank or investment fund delighted to have their names on their masthead. The sight of Kwarteng’s name alone might not wholly reassure shareholders. Perhaps if both men were to let the dust settle for a decade or so they might return. Stranger things have happened. But that is to speak of the long-term. In the meantime there is the eternal problem of what to do with the short- and medium-term. Sadly, the most obvious answer for many MPs is to make a bit of cash to soften the pain.

And I predict that this is where many an MP is about to come a cropper. As we can tell from the number of Conservative MPs who have announced they will not stand at the next election, a lot of Tory politicians can see the writing on the wall. They sense that they and their party have been weighed in the balance, found wanting and have decided to leg it before the details are made clear.

That is where the problem will lie for the rest of this government. Nobody has much of an idea what to do about inflation. If you think that the Conservatives are out of ideas, just wait until you hear Angela Rayner on the subject. But entrapping MPs will remain something which everybody knows how to do. There are scores of MPs who now see that they have no future in politics. What is worse, they intuit, perhaps correctly, that their time in politics is likely to prove a handicap rather than a boon in the job market they are entering. That makes them exceptionally easy prey for fake sheikhs offering easy money and asking them if they wouldn’t mind speaking a little more clearly into the briefcase over here.

Sleaze doesn’t run in the Conservative bloodstream any more than it does in the Labour one – it can infect any politician who senses that all their hopes are going to go the way of all flesh.