Chris McAndrew, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
This series of articles was supposed to be a lot of short scribblings. We now come to Keith Vaz who has so much previous that target has been swept aside. Keith looks to me like he has just slithered out of a vat of olive oil thus deserving his well earned epithet of oleaginous. He is surely one of the biggest crooks ever to be elected in this country and in a very crowded field that is an achievement in itself.
Nigel Keith Anthony Standish Vaz was the MP for Leicester East for 32 years finally leaving the House of Shame in 2019. However he missed it so much he stood again in 2024 in his old constituency for his new party called One Leicester. You will be overjoyed to learn that he failed dismally attracting only 3,681 loonies to put a cross next to his name.
In 1989 Vaz, a Catholic, led a march of several thousand muslims through Leicester calling for Salman Rushdie’s book, the Satanic Verses, to be banned. A few weeks earlier Vaz had promised Rushdie his full support, the worm turns.
In 1990 after the Provos bombed an Army recruiting centre in Leicester Vaz calmly suggested the Army might have planted the bomb itself. You must be starting to get the measure of the man by now.
In 2000 he fell foul of the Parliamentary Standards watchdog after he failed to declare donations from Sarosh Zaiwalla a solicitor. He was found guilty and also tried to stymie the investigation.
Again we have to revisit the Hinduja affair that did for Mandelscum. By this time Vaz was a Minister at the Foreign Office. The passport application was processed in record time, perhaps assisted by Vaz frequently asking about its progress. Vaz also didn’t declare hospitality from the Hindujas nor a donation to his wife’s company from the same source. After much mud slinging Vaz was kicked out as Europe Minister only to be replaced by that digger up of cricket pitches, Peter Hain.
He was a busy bee in 2001 allegedly helping Nadhmi Auchi to avoid extradition to France. Nadhmi was a billionaire and involved in the Elf Aquitaine fraud scandal. Vaz was a director of one of Auchi’s British companies.
In 2002 Vaz was suspended for one month from the House after he made false allegations against a former policewoman. The details are murky but three complaints against the oily one were upheld.
In 2007 Vaz was elected to the Home Affairs Select Committee. Elected is stretching the point a bit, he was the only candidate, Harperson saying there was not enough time to vet a bigger list. I beg to offer that if any vetting had been done Vaz’s name would not have been on the list.
Vaz backed the 42 day detention of terrorists without charge bill. It had been alleged that he was offered a peerage for his support which he of course denied.
There were a few more cases of Keith poking his nose in where it should not have been but it all gets a bit boring,
He was of course caught up in the expenses scandal. He lived in Stanmore, a 45 minute tube train ride away from Parliament but still managed to wangle a flat near Westminster and claimed as much as he could for it,
Vaz agreed to be on the all parliamentary group for Fiji proposed by Patrick Mercer. Mercer described Vaz as a crook of the first order, a real operator. As sure as day follows night the Standards Committee decided that Mercer had brought the House of Shame into disrepute, see how it works now.
The icing on the cake with Keith is the rent boy revelations. In 2016 it was revealed he had indulged in unprotected sex with male prostitutes and had offered to pay for cocaine should they want it. He told them his name was Jim and he was a washing machine salesman. He later apologised but come 2019 he was suspended for 6 months.
In 2018 he was up to some bullying. The victim was a former clerk of the house and Vaz had subjected her to a torrent of abuse.
I had heard some of this stuff before but not all of it, Jim the washing machine salesman was a figure of fun for a while but these things always fade into the past.
It is only when you see it laid out you realise what a wrong ‘un this man really was. How he avoided plod and various custodial sentences is beyond me but being an MP and an ethnic I suppose he had the perfect defence. A man who spent his entire career sailing very close to the wind was our mate Keith Vaz.
© well_chuffed 2026
