Only half a job, Dave

Tweet Cameron's promise to clean-up the lobbying business is a good sound bite, but looks more than a little insincere and incomplete to me. It's also highly partisan, aimed at departing Labour figures. Stopping MPs and Ministers from taking up lobbying jobs when they leave office is an obvious move, which most people will support.

But how about movement in the other direction? What about all the lobbyists standing for election – mostly, but not exclusively, as Tories? Is there no possibility that they are being paid good salaries by lobbying companies, not so much in the hope of influencing the present government from the outside, but more in the hope of influencing the next one from the inside?

Perish the thought. But no chance of Cameron taking action on that, I'd guess.