William Hague is trying to justify his role as a part-time Shadow Foreign Secretary by claiming that having outside interests makes him a better politician:

You can gain in your effectiveness as a politician from a wide acquaintance with the world and from a degree of independence that having some outside interests gives.

That is my personal view, and I think it has made me a better politician having these interests than I was before.

Yes, some outside intersts will do that. Some. A couple of hours a week, an external interest of some form. Not something that takes up several hours a day. That quite obviously takes away from their role on the front bench.

Shadow Cabinet members should not be part-time politicans. Almost all of them already have two jobs, that of a constituency MP and as a front bencher. They shouldn’t be adding another real job to that list. Especially since many people will struggle to hold on to one job in the next year.

Hague needs to make a decision – either be an MP and Shadow Foreign Secretary or earn hundreds of thousands of pounds outside the Commons.