LABOUR are — rightly — doing well out of the growing “second jobs” scandal in Parliament: the MPs with big-bucks-second-jobs and the ones who have tried to influence the government for their paymasters are overwhelmingly Tory.

Boris Johnson’s ham-fisted attempt to get Owen Paterson off for breaking the rules has led to anger about how far MPs are allowed to moonlight for corporations within those rules and calls to tighten the rules.

Keir Starmer’s team have pressed on how Conservative MPs are helping their corporate friends and themselves, not the voters. They’ve done it with more vigour than we are used to, which is good.

But this makes the actions of the few Labour figures who have been caught up in the scandal all the more disappointing.

It is in the Tories’ interests to argue this is a “Westminster” scandal not a Conservative one — if they can get across the idea that “all politicians are the same” and “everybody is at it” with corruption, they will generate cynicism. And that helps the Tories.

The Conservative vote already embraces cynicism, with their voters more likely to see bad behaviour as “human nature” and think everybody is “in it for themselves” anyway.

The sentiment that “you can’t change anything” doesn’t hit the Tory vote as much as the Labour vote, because the Tories aren’t arguing for change in the first place.

Cynicism generally depresses the vote, but the Tories can live more comfortably with lower turnouts, as their better-off, older voters will be a bigger proportion of those still turning up at the ballot box.

So anything that feeds the “they are all the same” argument is poison for Labour.

Step forward Lord Falconer. He has been Starmer’s shadow attorney general since last year. But he has held on to his second job as a partner in the US law firm Gibson Dunn.

In fairness to Falconer, he is a Lord, not an MP. They only get an attendance allowance for the days they go in and there is a much broader assumption that Lords should retain their jobs. But that still leaves the question of which jobs.

It doesn’t mean Labour Lords need to work for big-name US legal firms that represent big business.

Gibson Dunn isn’t a plucky legal practice with a reputation for representing the little guy: it is a US firm best known for corporate and rich clients — like representing oil firm Chevron as it tries to fight the government of Ecuador over pollution, or standing up for Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg as he fights it out with fellow billionaires over investment.

Falconer’s own clients for Gibson Dunn look equally corporate.

The Times found he was acting to represent a mining consortium against the government of Pakistan in a British Virgin Islands court case.

Representing corporations in offshore jurisdictions is an obvious set of red flags.

Falconer was working for Tethyan Copper in its dispute with the government of Pakistan in 2020 and 2021.

This is what is called an “investor-state dispute,” when a corporation sues a government. For anyone on the left it is very rare to see the “investor” to be the good guy.

Tethyan is trying to force the government of Pakistan to pay it £5 billion over some gold-digging rights it had taken away.

Again, anyone on the left would be suspicious of a corporation trying to squeeze £5bn from a government.

Tethyan says it bought the rights to dig for gold in the hills of Balochistan, and invested $220m and five years of work scoping it out, only to unfairly have its right to dig the gold cancelled.

The government of Pakistan says there was bribery and corruption in the firm’s getting the gold-digging licences in the first place.

Tethyan says it hasn’t shown proper evidence of corruption.

What socialist would want to be on the corporation’s side here?

which left-wing lawyer wants to be fighting for the rights of literal gold-diggers?

It gets worse when you look at what Tethyan is. Tethyan is a joint venture between Chilean mining company Antofagasta and Barrick Gold, a Canadian gold-mining firm.

Barrick Gold has a history of criticism from environmental and human rights defenders.

In 2014 Barrick spilled over one million litres of cyanide solution — cyanide is used in gold-mining — in Argentinian rivers, but waited six days to report the spill.

In 2014 Amnesty International reported state police forces in Papua New Guinea burned down around 200 homes of locals to make way for a Barrick goldmine. Amnesty reported a similar event in 2010.

In 2011 Human Rights Watch reported the private security guards employed by  Barrick Gold’s Papua New Guinea mine were abusing locals, including by gang rape.

Barrick Gold has variously argued these charges are inaccurate or, when accurate, that its management did not know and is investigating.

It is entitled to make its case, just as it is entitled to legal representation in its argument with the government of Pakistan.

But that should not mean it is entitled to representation by a current Labour shadow minister.

It’s worth noting that Gibson Dunn advertises Falconer’s service largely on the basis of his Labour Party experience.

Most of his Gibson Dunn pen portrait is about the work he did after he “joined the Blair government.”

The law firm is selling his services thanks to the Labour Party, but in turn his work could create embarrassment for the Labour Party.

On BBC’s Question Time recently, Alastair Campbell got some audience applause by arguing there was a case for politicians having other interests, “but I’d love it if just every now and then one of them said their second job was working in a foodbank or their second job was working for a charity.”

It’s an argument he should be directing at Lord Charles Falconer.