Issues surrounding the resignation of Maria Miller as Culture Secretary go to the heart of the modern political crisis. It is a crisis of confidence and of credibility: confidence because people – not just in Britain but all over the world – have more or less stopped trusting politicians as a breed, with the most common two complaints being that they are “on the make” and “all the same”; credibility, because they are not believed. They are assumed to say whatever is politically expedient, not what they know to be the truth. Yet without integrity and truthfulness at the top, the democratic system is dangerously weakened. The rise of the UK Independence Party (Ukip), the party which above all represents disillusionment with the political process, is a swo