THERE have course been many incidences of political payouts in British political history, most if not all (see Baroness Mone) dwarfed by Nigel Farage’s £5 million “thank you” — and the latest news of his extensive property portfolio and earnings for promoting Direct Bullion — £22,500 an hour. Nice.

Nothing in comparison to Donald Trump of course, who pocketed $2.2 billion last year.

Non-Farage related issues of recent years include the PPE procurement scandal, cash for access, cash for questions and cash for Russia (though the latter’s Nathan Gill was a Reform politician).

Further back, Charles I turned Parliamentarian Thomas Wentworth (played by Patrick Wymark in 1970’s Cromwell) into a supporter with the Earldom of Strafford and the lucrative cash-rinsing position of Lord Deputy of Ireland.

Bribes to others during Charles’s reign and his following imprisonment generally failed though.

But his son Charles II was far more successful, actively bribing and offering financial inducements to Members of Parliament for political support. And he was also notoriously the recipient of bribes himself from King Louis XIV of France.

Before becoming the first ever prime minister, Robert Walpole (1676-1745) was expelled from Parliament and imprisoned for six months in the Tower of London in 1712 for being “guilty of a high breach of trust and notorious corruption” regarding military contracts.

King George IV (1762-1830) was well-documented for dispensing bribes and financial favours to politicians, cartoonists, and various officials throughout his life as both Prince Regent and King.

In 1936, at the time of the abdication, Edward VIII, “The Traitor King” (1894-1972), misled the government and his brother, King George VI, about his actual personal fortune, claiming to have only £90,000 when he was actually worth over £1.1 million, secret wealth conflated with accusations of illicit payoffs, kickbacks and the like.

And, lest we forget, greedy former prime ,inisters Boris Johnson and Tony Blair…

In France, French revolutionary leader and then hero Honore Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau was revealed shortly after his death to have been secretly in the pay of the King Louis XVI. Two years after his death Mirabeau’s body was turfed out of Pantheon, the lay temple where the Great Men of France were laid to rest.

However it could be argued that Mirabeau was on the side of the angels in genuinely desiring a constitutional monarchy, unfortunate in taking a bung for something he actually believed in being exposed, his reputation reduced to excrement in the years following his death.