All parties are dying on their feet and need a smarter type of recruit

GROUCHO Marx famously sent the Friars’ Club a telegram: “Please accept my resignation. I do not want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.”

Looking at it from the other side, though, perhaps our political parties need to become clubs anxious to recruit just the sort of people who would not dream of joining.

If they are not already headed that way, they should be. If the current economic crisis tells us anything, it is that for their parliamentary candidates the political parties should be actively seeking men and women who can show a clean record of non-involvement.