I’m sorry to see David Thake leave politics. But he had to. By the simple practical rule that when a scandal lasts six days in the press the politician should not survive it, Thake had to accept the current was overwhelming him.

The six-day rule is not moral or ethical. It has no normative value at all. It’s a guideline for spin doctors whose job requires them to leave their moral compass at the door. Faced by a fire, spin doctors are expected to put it out. The metaphor of firefighting can be stretched a bit. When fighting a forest fire, the combatants set themselves a target. If the fire is too strong to be defeated by that target, the strategy is not to douse it but to steer it as it runs its course.

There was no way the accumulated VAT owed by Thake’s companies was going to be ignored or talked away. I can’t blame him for trying. After all, and I suppose this is especially foremost on his mind even now, it is surprising what the public chooses to care about. The measure of acceptance of a politician’s imperfections is not objective. The line behind which they must stay is curved.

The general rule of thumb is that the public is more lenient on Labour politicians. It’s the fate of the nerds, I suppose. Teachers expect the worst from the recidivist hooligans who sit in the back of the class causing all sort of trouble. Any minor infraction by the good boys who sit in the front is aggravated by disappointment.

It is absurd to equate the messy administration of tax returns of a private holding with multi-millions in unexplained wealth, exposed secret offshore accounts and back-hand deals financed with bribery and covered up with murder. It is just as absurd to think that anyone presenting themselves to criticise any of that can outlive the exposure of their own vulnerabilities.

I’ve read recently Mary Beard’s extraordinarily witty and succinct history of ancient Rome and one of the things I learnt from her is the etymological relationship between the word ‘candid’ (as in honest, clean and transparent) and ‘candidate’ (as in someone running for public office).

People running for public office in ancient Rome starched their togas a brilliant white to look their shiniest best. Candidus is Latin for white. In Shakespeare’s play, Marcus Andronicus, tribune of the people, invites his brother Titus to replace the recently deceased emperor. “Be candidatus then, and put on (this palliament of white and spotless hue) and help to set a head on headless Rome.”

Is anyone white and spotless? No. Does everyone who neglects filing of accounts or uses VAT collected as an overdraft facility for their business deserve to wade in the same swimming pool in hell with those guilty of thievery and simony? Neither.

We found out about David Thake’s VAT situation because the government wanted us to know- Manuel Delia

But it is something we are entitled to hope that politicians who represent us work hard to scrub their togas white, to look like they’ve made an effort to have their personal affairs in order as a good example to those they presume to preach to.

In his effort to survive, Thake wondered aloud if the anger with which his companies’ fiscal issues were received and given how ‘ordinary’ his infractions were for a typical mid-sized business meant that no one running their own business could or would be allowed to serve in parliament.

That opens up a lot of questions.

Is it really so ordinary for businesses to be so lazy about filing their yearly returns? Is it really part of the system for businesses to dip into tax they collect and let the public authorities wait until they feel more comfortable handing up the tax already charged to consumers? If it is that ordinary, is it acceptable? Should we not expect people in politics who are familiar with this reality to be campaigning to change it?

Is ‘normality’ an indication of acceptability? After all, Joseph Muscat defended Keith Schembri’s network of companies in offshore tax havens as “normal for a business”, essentially justifying tax avoidance if not tax evasion. Was that acceptable? To avoid doubt, my answer is no.

But, then, there are flip sides to this line of questions.

Do we want our MPs to spend any of their time struggling with the slings and arrows of the outrageous fortunes of their personal businesses? Haven’t we hired them to be making laws and watching over our government? Surely, that should be taking up all of their time. My answer to Thake’s bittersweet musing then is yes, politicians should get out of their business when they’re elected as MPs and do that job for us full-time, please.

I’ll make a final point on this. Not that I suggest that it should stop us from holding politicians of all hues to account and expect them to leave when their toga is found muddied but let’s not be the naive ones now.

We found out about Thake’s VAT situation because the government wanted us to know. They wanted us to know because they fully expected us to be displeased with what we learn and he’d be forced out of the scene, one less inconvenient hound gnawing at their clay feet. And Thake was awfully good at gnawing at the clay feet of the corrupt he faced down.

Consider that Thake stopped swimming against the current because he or his party or both were sensitive to the six-day rule. Consider in contrast how long Schembri and Konrad Mizzi and Muscat swam against the current after the Panama-three were exposed, almost four years that proved so devastating to this country.

While we’re rightly disappointed with the imperfections of the near-perfect boys in the front, let’s keep the giggling scoundrels in the back in the proper perspective, shall we?