LIAM FOX

Until he resigned yesterday, Liam Fox was the U.K.'s Defence Secretary. Adam Werrity is his close friend, and was a former flatmate and the best man at Mr. Fox's wedding. Mr. Fox assures everybody who will listen, that Mr. Werrity was neither a paid nor an unpaid adviser. Yet it has emerged that since May 2010, Mr. Werrity has accompanied Mr. Fox on no less than 18 overseas trips, and met the Defence Secretary 22 times at his office. Mr. Werrity also had business cards printed that said that he was an adviser to Mr. Fox.

Like most countries, the U.K. has rules about political advisers. In particular, it should be clear who is an adviser, and who is paying for him/her (a political party, the civil service, whatever). Most people today can't afford to go on so many foreign trips out of their own pocket, and Mr. Werrity is no exception. It turns out that rich people who support Mr. Fox's views (he is to the right of the Conservative Party and came third in the 2005 leadership election that propelled the more centrist David Cameron to the top job) have been paying Mr. Werrity, presumably in order to get make sure that those views continue to reach Mr. Fox's ear. If true, then Mr. Werrity is a political adviser, whatever Mr. Fox may say.

All in all, this is an odd state of affairs. But the oddest part of the whole thing is that Mr. Fox - until yesterday, at least - did not think it odd at all. It is yet another example of how people often go a bit bonkers when they obtain political power. The job of a politician, and the reason they get paid by the state, is to represent the people who elect them. But having got elected, many politicians then go off and do all sorts of bizarre things. In recent memory, we have had the Parliamentary expenses scandal in the U.K., when M.P.'s were claiming expenses for (eg) second mortgages that they didn't have. In Germany, the Defence Minister tried to brush aside the fact that he had plagiarised his PhD thesis. In the U.S., a congressman sent pictures of himself in his underwear to women he wanted to get to know. The head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, had a sexual encounter with a hotel cleaner. And so on and so forth.

Back in London, the country's top civil servant is now investigating whether Mr. Fox broke the Ministerial Code. His report is due out on Tuesday, but I can guess the outcome; yes, he did. On whether he gets to the bottom of what Mr. Werrity was actually doing, I am less sure.

Walter Blotscher