KATIE HOPKINS: Newspapers have every right to expose the slippery Mr Vaz and the public have every right to slaver over it - but unless he has broken the law he also has the right to tell us to mind our own moral business

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We’re asking the wrong question about Keith Vaz, should he stay or should he go?

The real question is actually how tolerant are you?

In truth, we all love a grubby story. It’s the reason you can never get your hands on a copy of the tabloids at BBC Broadcasting House — liberal lefties can’t get enough of them.

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No matter how uncomfortable his dark deeds might make the missionary massive, Keith Vaz (pictured in the Commons yesterday) has done nothing illegal, writes Katie Hopkins 

We like it when other people are caught being dirty because we feel cleaner about our own lives. Someone else’s affair makes us feel smug in our marriage, horror frocks at the TV Choice Awards making our own wardrobe look pretty classy after all.

But being interesting does not make something in the public interest. Do we really need to know what Keith Vaz gets up to behind closed doors?

Hosting my radio show as the news broke, I said no.

I felt strangely distant from others around me who were titivated by the story, lapping up the gory details, one colleague gloating over this final demise after years of scandal.

It makes no sense coming from me, I know.

Vaz is everything I can’t stand. A fat Labour MP from Leicester – a city in which, outrageously, I am an ethnic minority. And his past record makes him look a little less upstanding than Prince Andrew when he worked as British Trade Envoy.

But I’ve been him.

I’ve had the knock on my door on a Saturday night with a smug young hack showing me tomorrow’s front page asking for any comment. I’ve had to make the awkward phone call to my boss to explain a picture that said more than a thousand words, of me having sex in a field...

And you can say I have the morals of an alley cat. I accept your opinion, but urge you to focus on Keith Vaz.

Ms Hopkins says the only line Keith Vaz crossed is heading up the Home Affairs Committee, currently tasked with deciding on the legality of prostitution, without declaring his hand

No matter how uncomfortable his dark deeds might make the missionary massive, Vaz has done nothing illegal. It’s not illegal to purchase sex and it is not illegal to take poppers whether he did it once or all summer long.

And he is not alone – in any sense. The sex workers I know tell me we are all only one or two family members away from someone paying for sex, whether it’s your GP, your teacher, your father or your son.

If it’s Vaz’s wife and kids you feel sorry for, I can understand. Pity feels virtuous because it elevates you to a position of moral superiority.

If you feel pity for his wife and kids you are probably the sort of person who likes having lunch with a fat friend because she makes you feel slim, or inviting a weeping divorcée to dinner to feel better about being single.

Do not pity his wife and kids. If I was a gambling lady I’d guess their arrangement was as solid as my friend’s whose husband Bruce becomes Barbara on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. His fun-times flat is just around the corner from their family home.

The Ashley Madison exposé evidenced legions of men and women perfectly willing to engage in extramarital sex with no strings attached. The BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing — decent family viewing — gives a sterilised insight into how fickle the bonds of marriage can be.

As others wade into the row desperate for their shared moment in the grubby debate, excuses for Keith get more desperate. And unnecessary.

One friend says Keith thought the two young men with bulging crotches were builders. Another blames the Sunday Mirror for violating his privacy. Peter Tatchell is using Keith to lament how difficult it is for a gay man to express his sexuality, how society is to blame, not Mr Vaz.

Ignore these people. They are noise and add nothing to the debate.

Mr Vaz is pictured leaving his home in Edgware, north London, with his wife Maria yesterday following the allegations

Being gay or bisexual is not a free pass to escape the judgement of the mob if your job puts you in the public eye. Paying for sex or drugs is always going to raise eyebrows, no matter your sexuality.

Vaz does not need lame excuses.

I believe if you make your living in the public eye, the press has every right to try and sneak into any bit of it.

If you choose to ride Eastern Europeans bareback through the night, expect to be found out.

But equally, an individual has every right to conduct their private life as they please. To embrace their choices.

Ms Hopkins says she has been in the same position as Keith Vaz, when the press also reported on her private life

Quite recently I had the pleasure of spending an evening with Max Mosley, a dapper man who successfully sued the News of the World after they filmed him receiving a good spanking by an assortment of partially-clothed women.

The News of the World accused him of taking part in a Nazi-themed orgy, thereby claiming a ‘public interest’ in publishing the story.

Quite simply, Mosley refused to be ashamed. He says, ‘It was just sex, for Christ’s sake.’

Now you may well argue that Max Moseley’s naked bottom is less relevant because he was not a politician, but a boss of Formula One.

(Funnily enough, he shares a former profession with Mr Vaz: the law. I will leave you to your own conclusion about the sexual peccadilloes of former lawyers.)

And this seems to be at the heart of the matter: do politicians need to live to a higher moral code than the rest of us?

Do we need our politicians to be priests (of the non-paedo variety)?

And if your position is indeed that politicians should live to a higher moral code than you, I wonder what standard do you demand. What is acceptable in your eyes?

Can politicians be any number of things concealed within your own family closets; divorced, gay, adulterous, a mad letch? Where is the arbitrary line in your sexual sand pray tell?

I'd still like to know the source of Mr Vaz's mysterious wealth - and if it turns out that he used charity money to pay for his assignations, an allegation strongly denied by the charity, then all bets are off.

But beyond that it seems to me the only line Keith Vaz crossed is heading up the Home Affairs Committee, currently tasked with deciding on the legality of prostitution, without declaring his hand, a position from which we are told he will step down later this afternoon.

I’d argue it would be the first time a politician has useful real-world experience to offer on a debate. He is a client. He actually knows what he is talking about, having walked a little on the dirtier side of the tracks.

I think he should have declared his interest to the Home Affairs Committee, and explained why he had a useful contribution to offer to its debate.

Undoubtedly the press has every right to intrude. But, importantly, Mr Vaz has every right to refuse to be ashamed.

The only pity in this sorry mess is he doesn't have the guts to say so.