The strange salmon-coloured bra is actually the least of it. I don’t care at all if a Lord wears one under his ermine – this weekend’s scandal concerning John Buttifant Sewel is actually a financial issue dressed up as a sexual one.

It has the elements of the classic sting: alleged cocaine use, “call girls”, “romps” and a married peer who turns over the picture of his wife before starting his “sex games”. He slags off every one from David Cameron (“the most facile superficial prime minister”) to Alex Salmond (“a silly pompous prat”).

Sewel resigned last night from his role enforcing standards and conduct in the Lords – a role in which he wrote about breaches of the membership code and the need for sanctions against those who break them. He has noted that ”no system of regulation can be perfect” and that the small number of peers who misbehave should be punished.

It is fairly astonishing, in this context, to hear Sewel referred to as a victim of any kind, let alone of the regime he recommended. So will he now be expelled from the Lords?

He paid women in prostitution for their services in a grace and favour flat in Dolphin Square for which he pays £1,000 a month instead of the going rate of nearly £3,000. This man’s “private life” is subsidised to the hilt by the taxpayer, and that is what really sticks in the craw. That, and his comments about Asian women. He asks if there will be any “nice little young Asian women” at the party, before adding, “they sort of look innocent but you know they are whores”. As he was the guy in the Lords responsible for making sure that his colleagues, his fellow public servants, behaved properly, the notion of “double standards” covers him much less impressively than that unfortunate bra. His awful moaning to the women who charged him £200 a night about how he can’t get by on a Lords allowance of £200 a day is the worst element of the whole scandal. “I do spend it on wine and different things,” he remarked.

Is there any real question that he should remain in the House? That he should not be expelled?

In reality the allowance for peers is £300 a day, though it does not apply to Sewel. He is paid £120,000 a year, made up of his salary for his part-time work chairing committees in the Lords (£84,525) and his allowance of £36,000 for maintaining a home in London. He complains that he is struggling, and when one of the women asks if his £200 allowance pays for his lunch, he replies: “It’s not lunch luvvie darling, it’s paying for this”. Wow. Is there any real question that he should remain in the House? That he should not be expelled? He certainly can’t be put back in charge of the conduct committee, or appointed to any others. His behaviour and his sense of entitlement have clearly prospered in the context of the Lords. This is six-figure scrounging.

He actually accuses one of the women of stealing as he whinges about using a £5 note, apparently to snort coke, as the £10 ones disappear. How cheap can you get?

It’s this, not the flashing of women’s underwear, that is really shocking – a glimpse of his sense of utter entitlement both to the bodies of women, and to the public money he uses to pay for them.