By inky group think, political columnists and leader writers have taken to quoting The Great Gatsby, by F Scott Fitzgerald, with reference to the government. They are good words, so I shall join the queue.

“They were careless people,” observes the novel’s narrator, Nick Carraway. “They smashed up things… and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness.”

From the Jazz Age to a jazzed-out age; from days of ragtime to a ragged old time when careless ministers who smash up things are cushioned by personal wealth more capacious than anything amassed by the fictional Jay Gatsby.

It all makes you nostalgic for John Major’s government, when a mere £2,000 bought you a scandal.

You may recall that two Conservative MPs were accused of taking such an amount and accepting gifts from Mohamed Al Fayed (then owner of Harrods) to ask certain questions in the House of Commons.

Tory sleaze (2023 variant) is in the news again, thanks to the past behaviour of former prime minister Boris Johnson and the tax affairs of Nadhim Zahawi, the man he appointed as chancellor for a brief spell last summer.

And, no, Johnson hasn’t gone away as most of us had hoped but floats still in the Tory fish tank like a bloviating whale, spouting nonsense and gobbling up crustacean cash.

The Sunday Times reports that the present BBC chairman, Richard Sharp, helped arrange a guarantee on a loan with a third party for up to £800,000 for Johnson. Weeks later, Johnson recommended Sharp for the top BBC job.

Johnson dismissed the story in typical fashion, first saying it showed the BBC was “disappearing up its own fundament”. Then he burbled to Sky News that “Richard Sharp knows absolutely nothing about my personal finances. I can tell you that for one hundred percent ding dang sure”.

Why does that man speak like that? Perhaps so we don’t notice that his scuffed shoes so often stand in something that doesn’t smell right.

Whatever turns out to be the truth (a word to use around Johnson with extreme caution and strong glue), this all suggests a cosy, back-scratching club where a known Tory donor does a favour for an old associate and ends up being recommended for the job.

None of this suggests Sharp doesn’t necessarily have the skills, but it sure raises a bad smell over BBC impartiality.

There is something very odd about Boris Johnson and money.

Whatever he has is never enough to service his rapacious needs, so he begs and borrows from friendly sources. Or accepts endless freebies (accommodation, extravagant holidays and so on) from wealthy backers rather than stumping up for anything himself.

What a good job he’s so famously reliable or else they might never see their money again.

The accompanying money scandal – and there’s sure to be yet another along in a minute, queuing up as they are like taxi cabs – concerns the Tory party chairman.

Nadhim Zahawi is under pressure after apparently “carelessly” forgetting to report an estimated £27 million to HMRC ­– and coming to a deal reportedly paying as much as £5 million to settle the matter.

And all this was going on when Johnson appointed him as chancellor last year, admittedly on what turned into a two-month summer holiday job (see last blog), but the point stands.

Zahawi was in charge of decisions relaying to our tax affairs – while at the same time being investigated by HMRC. And if that doesn’t smell off to you, perhaps your nose needs investigating.

It is easy to worry that there is just too much wealth in the modern Tory party. Like Rishi Sunak, Zahawi is unfeasibly rich, rolling in so much money that he is quite disconnected from ordinary life and ordinary people.

A government of the super-rich, for the super-rich; a government of bankers for bankers, and so on, carelessly carrying on while inhabiting a world far above ours.

Odd footnote: After Boris Johnson flew off to Ukraine, his usual response when things get sticky at home, the Daily Mail published a front-page report under his by-line, as if he were a star reporter or something. Or perhaps an editor in the making, not that the dosh would be enough for him.

David Yelland, once the editor of the Sun, suggested on Twitter that Johnson had my old colleague Geordie Greig fired as editor of the Mail – presumably because he’d started reporting properly on his scandal-laden behaviour.

Another example of how those who run everything in this country are far too tangled up. In this case, two Eton old boys scrapping.

Incidentally, Greig has just been appointed editor of the online-only Independent.