TOO many of the wrong people fill our jails, folk locked up for crimes of desperation. The poor are the victims of the very people who should be taking their place on prison wings: politicians.

Politicians have destroyed the lives of millions while enriching themselves at the expense of those they’ve ruined. Former police chief superintendent Niven Rennie, who runs Scotland’s Violent Crime Reduction Unit, told me last week that crime is a disease and the cause is poverty. The policies of politicians lay at the heart of the problem, he said.

A few weeks previously, Frances Cook, head the prison reform charity the Howard League, told me: “It’s poverty we imprison”.

We’ve just learned that cases of malnutrition have almost doubled in the decade since the Conservatives took power. In 2010/11, there were 4657 hospital cases. By 2020/21, austerity has seen that rise to more than 10,000. Cases of scurvy – the Victorian Work House illness linked to poor diet – also doubled. In a sane world, such utter failure – such wilful neglect of our most vulnerable people – would itself be grounds for criminal trial.

READ MORE: We've made our politicians gods

Yet the most crooked among us not only walk free, but lord it over us as if we’re beneath them. Boris Johnson is running a kleptocracy in London. The word sleaze doesn’t do justice to what this Prime Minister presides over. The only fitting word is corruption and even that’s too mild.

This is no longer just an issue of Johnson endangering democracy. Police have been asked to investigate the awarding of peerages to donors who gave millions to the Tory party. Eight of the nine last Tory treasurers were offered a seat in the Lords, with each donating at least £3 million. The police could investigate under the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925.

Filth mounts upon filth so rapidly it’s no longer possible to keep an eye on all the outrages. Yesterday, new accusations emerged about Iain Duncan Smith and his £25,000 second job advising a multimillion pound hand sanitiser company – after he chaired a government taskforce which recommended new rules benefitting the firm. Former attorney general Sir Geoffrey Cox used his MPs office to carry out private work for the British Virgin Islands (BVI). Cox worked for the infamous tax haven’s government fighting claims of corruption … in a case brought by the UK. He’s been paid more than £1million for work as a lawyer, for clients including BVI.

This column isn’t long enough to list the full ledger of disgrace that the Johnson government and its MPs stand accused of: from the Covid contracts gravy train, and Johnson’s lavish flat refurbishment, to the Owen Paterson scandal with its attempt to gut any system of parliamentary scrutiny, and favours for the Prime Minster’s former lover Jennifer Arcuri, the government and its party is rotten to the very core. It’s corrupt, venal and at times seemingly criminal.

There are powers to arrest and jail politicians who betray our trust. The law of Misconduct in a Public Office carries with it a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The law can be invoked if a “public officer” – which includes MPs, MSPs, Lords, councillors, the whole lot of them – “wilfully neglects to perform his or her duty and/or wilfully misconducts him or herself, to such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder, without reasonable excuse or justification”.

If you were sat on a jury in the Old Bailey now – with any number of politicians before you – might you not feel inclined to convict?

READ MORE: A danger to democracy

Politicians need to fear us. They need to fear our wrath and our vengeance. If politicians were as cowed as the poor – as scared of putting a foot wrong in case the state came crashing down on them – this country would begin to change overnight.

Instead, what passes for the British commentariat suggests that if only Johnson were contrite about what’s happened, then we could all move on. This canting babble comes from journalists who feed from the same trough as politicians.

There should be no second jobs for MPs or MSPs or any elected official. There should be a complete ban on any lobbying activity by all politicians. There should be a punitively low bar set for the receipt of gifts and expenses. Like you and most workers in Britain, I’m not allowed to accept much more than a standard lunch from anyone I deal with – and rightly so.

The same troughing commentators claim that if we prevent MPs having second jobs then we’ll lose talent and ability. What abject lies. What talent? The talent to pick the pockets of the taxpayer? What ability? The ability to remain unaccountable?

Let them quit. Go back to the shires and disappear from public life. Let ordinary people who really believe in public service stand – not the gangsters in pinstripe who currently rule us for their own interests.

The only good that has come from this latest wave of sleaze allegations is that Johnson is now haunted. He’s no longer the Teflon Don – the filth sticks today.

Johnson has spent most of his premiership trying to foment a culture war in order to blind the public not only to his own corrupt venality and the corrupt venality of his party, but also his towering inability to govern. The only culture war that now exists is a war on his culture of corruption.

Britain feels like it’s drifting deep into Trump territory these days. A corrupt and stupid leader, a corrupt and stupid governing party, a dismantling of checks and balances, a weak and bewildered opposition, and voters at each others throats over issues cooked up by politicians to divide us.

Left and right, unionist and nationalist, there’s one sure thing which can unite us all: cleaning up this cesspit we call a country, a place that’s been turned into a toilet by politicians. That law on Misconduct in a Public Office is open for us all to invoke. If you believe your MP has breached that law, report them to police. Change starts with ordinary people and their small acts of rebellion.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald