We lack, it seems to me, the language of disgrace. And where there is no language of disgrace – no deep damnation – there is no language of compassion either – no pity like a naked newborn babe, no tears that drown the wind. I’ve no desire to trawl through the rights and wrongs of the Huhne case now that they’ve been packed off, and you could say that their shame resides precisely in the pettiness of their offence, for which small words will do as well as great, but do you not feel, reader, that in the absence of prophets among our commentators and tragedians among our judiciary, without a grand cosmology of sin and expiation to shape our thoughts, we haven’t really risen to the drama of their fall?