Whatever it is that he has done, it’s not illegal.

So he had meetings with a rich Russian. And? So have lots of people. What the basic facts of this are:

• No money has been donated to the Conservative party by Deripaska or any of his companies
• No law has been broken.

The worst claim that can be made against Osborne is that he is guilty of having a lack of common sense and a malfunctioning of his political antennae.

No, he shouldn’t have been having meetings with a Russian billionaire, especially not when Britain is suffering from a recession. But he hasn’t done anything that is actually wrong – a view supported by the [Labour] chairman of the public administration select committee:

We are not talking about corruption here, there was no corruption. We’re not talking about law-breaking, there is no law-breaking. What there is is a massive misjudgement.

That’s it. A misjudgement, and no broken laws. So Gordon Brown can call for “the authorities” to intervene all he likes, but there is nothing to investigate.

Mandelson’s dealings with Deripaska, which appear to have been rather fogotten by the media recently, are worse considering his position then and now. And I don’t even think that he has done much wrong.

The most revealing thing that has come out of this is the apparent level of class snobbery that still exists today. Why does the family into which someone was born matter in the slightest? It’s what they have done that matters.

George [or "Gideon" as some bloggers seem determined to call him] Osborne has done nothing illegal and nothing wrong. All he has done is something rather silly – and that’s not a crime.