Lord Agnew’s resignation was a study in barely confined rage

The peaceful, somnolent, Ruritanian chamber of the House of Lords isn’t used to “wow” moments. Rumours are that the last such was experienced when some noble members were disturbed by the great earthquake of 1750, the last to have its epicentre in London, measuring 3.1 on the Richter scale.

Now, though, Lord Agnew of Oulton, a Treasury minister, has produced another, and in politically seismic fashion. Departing from his script, the minister decried the £29bn in fraud lost by the government through a combination of “arrogance, indolence and ignorance”.

It was a study in barely confined rage. He declared that he could not, as the minister in charge of fighting fraud, continue in office. A grey, masked head behind him snapped to attention at the shock. The circumstances, Lord Agnew did not need to add, were so shameful and dishonourable that he had enough. Snapping his red folder shut, he bid their noble lordships goodbye and walked out, briskly, shoulders high and with the air of a man who has just got his conscience back from the dry cleaners. His peers applauded – a rare accolade.

The earth shook, sort of. It was vaguely reminiscent of the famous scene in the film Network (1976), where the TV news anchorman, Howard Beale (Peter Finch) breaks down: “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.”

A minister resigning on a matter of principle isn’t the sort of thing we’re used to expecting from the Johnson administration. Hanging on for dear life? Sure. Trying to lie your way out of trouble? An everyday occurrence. Announcing a non-independent inquiry with carefully curtailed terms of reference and reporting to you yourself? But of course, minister. Just walking about, literally, because “the current state of affairs is unacceptable”? As a way of ending the waste? You can sense the tremors.

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Lord Agnew, also known as Theodore, has done something remarkable. He was at pains to point out that his resignation has nothing to do with the more dramatic events going on around him, but they did. The losses through Covid fraud were very much a symptom of the weaknesses at the heart of the present government, most particularly its utter contempt for taxpayers’ money.

It was government ministers who suspended all the rules and created illogical and unproductive VIP lanes to win Covid contracts. It was they who were responsible for the colossal losses, as the Public Accounts Committee and the recent judgement from the High Court makes clear. But no minister has reigned over this or any other major scandal, with the exception of Matt Hancock, who the prime minister did his best to keep him on.

Only Allegra Stratton has resigned over Partygate, and she wasn’t even at any of them. Lord Frost quit as Brexit minister because he was irked with the government over “the current direction of travel”, but that was a matter of policy, not principle.

The earth-shaking irony here is that Lord Agnew quit, even though he’d actually done nothing personally wrong – he left out of frustration with those more arrogant, indolent and ignorant who did.