I receive emails as adverts using previously published articles. This was in today’s (7/7/21). Do you remember Aitken and his ‘sword of truth’?

Following an investigation by the Guardian and the now-defunct Granada TV, questions were raised about who picked up the £1,000 bill for former Conservative MP and cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken’s Paris Ritz hotel room in 1993. Aitken, a government minister in charge of defence procurement at the time, had a close friendship with a businessman who had strong links to the Saudi Arabian royal family, whose aides paid for Aitken’s hotel. Strongly denying the claims, Aitken sued the Guardian and Granada for libel, but was proved to be lying, and was later jailed for 18 months for perjury and perverting the course of justice. Writing at the time when the first details were emerging, the writer of this editorial sees Aitken’s case as a small part of a greater “rot” endemic within the Conservative Party; likening it to the “Great Stink” of 1858. It is a “rot” many people still see today, following accusations of cronyism in Boris Johnson’s government.