This article is the subject of a legal complaint from Lord O'Shaughnessy.
As a former head of MI5, Lord Evans of Weardale spent a career defending British democracy against immediate threats. Last week he warned against a more insidious danger to public life.
Evans was making a speech in his role as chairman of the committee on standards in public life — the anti-corruption watchdog — on whether the country was now in a “post-Nolan age”.
That refers to Lord Nolan, first holder of the position, who was drafted in to clean up Westminster 25 years ago when it emerged that MPs had been bribed in cash to ask questions in parliament.
The verdict given by Evans at a virtual conference was damning. “Quite simply,”
