The news of David Laws' expenses claim was deeply shocking. It was not just that another young MP had lied pointlessly.
Through the recent travails and sad ends of Elliot Morley, David Chaytor and many others, voters know to expect the unexpected of their MPs - particularly if those elected live a life that is shadowed by dark appetites or fractured by private vice.
There are dozens of MPs names out there with reasonable and not-so-reasonable claims, or damaging habits both past and present, we all know who they are. And we are not being ghoulish to anticipate, or to be mentally braced for, their bad end: a long night, a mysterious cabinet reshuffle, an odd set of circumstances that herald a sudden change of department.
In fact, it is rather depressingly familiar. But somehow we never expected it so soon. Not after the last lot. Not David Cameron's lot.
In the cheerful environs of the new ConDem coalition, and before the cutting really started in earnest, Laws was always charming, cute, polite and funny.
A founder member of Britain's first coalition for 60 years, he was the LibDem's chief negotiator, even though he could barely carry a tune in a Louis Vuitton trunk.
He was the Posh Spice of the LibDems, a popular but largely decorous addition.
David Laws came out as gay yesterday afternoon after the Daily Telegraph printed it on the front of its newspaper...
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