Is politics a service, a duty, a means to represent the needs and aspirations of the people, or is it a launchpad for lucrative jobs in the private sector? George Osborne was terribly amused in the House of Commons yesterday: all this fuss over a trifling issue like the corruption of British democracy! Can’t we see he’s doing us a favour, having to suffer the indignity of being paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for multiple jobs rather than representing his constituents, all to make sure our “parliament is enhanced”, as he puts it? The sacrifice Osborne has made for all of us, having to be paid a juicy salary to further blur the distinction between media and political power, to make sure parliament is enriched by yet more MPs failing to devote themselves to the people who elected them.

There isn’t a sick bag big enough. It turns out he didn’t bother waiting for the advisory committee on business appointments to decide whether there is a conflict of interest first. Either they rule that there is an obvious conflict of interest in a serving senior Tory politician editing a daily newspaper, or the rules are a farce. Regardless, there are a number of lessons here. One is that some politicians think they are simply too brilliant to be reduced to the mere level of giving a voice to those they exist to serve, exploiting the prominence that comes with constituents selecting them as their representative and then making a packet out of it. Another was David Miliband, who made hundreds of thousands of pounds for speeches and corporate advisory roles when he returned to the backbenches: at least he had the dignity to eventually resign from his seat.

Then there is the revolving door of British politics. Public office gives you lots of marketable advantages: prominence, connections, knowledge of the inside workings of government. These can then be exploited by major corporations, wealthy individuals and media oligarchs to gain even more power over our corrupted democracy. Health ministers whose job it is to defend our sacred NHS end up working for private health firms who benefit from its privatisation; defence ministers end up working for arms firms bidding for government contracts. Our now foreign secretary was paid a quarter of a million pounds – described by Boris Johnson as “chicken feed” – for writing newspaper columns rather than, say, serving Londoners (although he did give up his regular column after becoming foreign secretary).

Then there’s the parlous state of British journalism, increasingly an exclusive gilded club for those whose parents have healthy bank balances. Talented working-class aspiring journalists are discriminated against because they can’t live off the Bank of Mum and Dad. With few exceptions, only the well-to-do can afford to do the unpaid internships and expensive journalism masters’ degrees that increasingly must adorn the CVs of those with hopes of making it into journalism. Having parents with connections has helped multiple journalists, too. And yet a man with precious little experience in journalism – other than being rejected by the Times’s graduate scheme – can get parachuted into the editor’s seat of a major newspaper because of who he is and who he knows. A cushy job for the ex-chancellor while the salaries of overworked Evening Standard employees are slashed.

And then there’s the attempt to rehabilitate Osborne as a liberal hero. To be fair, given there’s an ongoing operation to make George W Bush – who drowned Iraq in blood and chaos and who is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths – into a cuddly paragon of virtue in the age of Trump, I shouldn’t be surprised.

Apparently Osborne will now offer the real opposition to this government. Rubbish. He’d be in government now, kowtowing to Theresa May’s line, if he hadn’t suffered the indignity of being sacked by her. He is a man whose ideologically driven cuts programme caused the longest squeeze in workers’ wages since the Victorian era, who callously tried (and failed) to balance the nation’s books on the backs of benefit claimants – who he relished stigmatising – all for partisan interests. Much of the mess Britain is now in is down to his disastrously failed policies. His victims are rarely heard by a press that champions the interests of the powerful while demonising disabled people, refugees, anyone without a voice. If he is the new champion of the remainer cause, then it is certainly doomed.

But perhaps Osborne has done us all a service. In whose interests is this country run? They’re not even pretending any more. Britain is ruled by a never-ending dinner party, marked by limitless self-regard and contempt for those who don’t have a seat at the table. It is a grim spectacle. It is also a threat to our democracy, and it must be called out.