Jimmy Cayne, the cigar-chomping, bridge & golf loving boss of Bear Sterns, had a pay packet of $34m last year.

The US bank, which was worth $140bn last summer, has just been bought by JP Morgan for $236m in a desperate rescue mission.

British MPs are getting a lot of stick right now for their remuneration. By my rough calculation you could employ 300 of them for the price of one Mr Cayne (pictured below).

That isn’t going to avert the mother of all rows, however, when MPs’ pay comes to a head in July.

We revealed in Saturday’s paper that members may be asked to vote on a 50 per cent pay rise which would take their salaries to £94,000 in return for foresaking their expenses.

In case you missed the story, here it is.

We called Goldman Sachs on Wednesday (when the political donation figures came out for the end of 2007)  to ask if the Michael Sherwood who gave the Tories £8,500 in November was the same Michael Sherwood who is European co-chief executive of the ubiquitous US bank. The answer was no.

They’ve called back to admit they were wrong. It was the very same Mr Sherwood, said a spokesman from the bank. But the money was paid for tickets to a Tory event by Mr Sherwood and his wife and should have been recorded as £4,250 each. As a result the banker should not have ended up on the Electoral Commission website, which records donations of  £5,001 and over. (Although the spokesman did not know if he paid for both tickets, in which case the figure should be in the public eye.)

Goldman has been advising the government on its options for a private sale of Northern Rock, although Mr Sherwood was not directly involved in the negotiations. “He is politically non-aligned,” said the bank.

And just in case you missed it in our story last week, another interesting new Tory donor was Hugh Scott-Barrett, finance director of the unsuccessful JC Flower bid for Northern Rock. The former ABN Amro executive gave £33,500 to the Conservatives at about the time Flowers withdrew from its bid talks.

*

Incidentally the spokesman has just come back with a further clarification of the facts. It transpires that the Sherwoods paid £10,000 for the two tickets but £1,500 of this went to the two meals while only the remainder was an actual donation. That seems like an expensive feast by any standards. 

Amid endless controversy over pay and perks, Parliament was about to start cleaning up its act. The first change would have been a move to make MPs declare any family members on their payroll. That was the plan, anyhow. All three parties leaders had expressed their support. But the measure, proposed by the standards and privileges committee - which would have sailed through the Commons and become law by early April - has run into sand.

It emerged today that the committee has taken legal advice that exposure of these names would breach employment law. What will happen is that the disclosures will instead be voluntary on the register of members’ interests. Any shift to an compulsory system will have to wait until secretaries’ and researchers’ contracts are changed to get around this. So much for the big spring clean.

Let’s face it, British politicians are the Lilliputians of the world of political money scandals. However much time journalists spend muckraking, whatever misconduct is uncovered, it is almost always small fry. Our politicians, for the last decade or more, seem incapable of corruption on a grand scale.

Where is the Randy "Duke" Cunningham of Westminster? The former Republican congressman pleaded guilty in 2005 to taking $2.4m in kick-backs. He cavorted with prostitutes (feeding them grapes in Hawaiian hot-tubs) and used private jets — all on the expense account of defence contractors. He did not need his party leader or a standards commissioner to tell him to step down.

Where is the William Jefferson of Westminster? The Democratic congressman is in court fighting charges of bribery after the FBI raided his house and found $90,000 in his freezer. Cold cash, as they say.

And who could match James Trafficant, the toupee wearing Democratic congressman who was sentenced to eight years in prison for bribery? As well as taking kick-backs, the Congressman forced his staff to toil on his Ohio farm. He was so fond of his job, the House had to vote to expel him — after he was convicted. (He had one vote in his favour, would you believe.)

I do not mean to make light of Labour’s donations problems — the Abrahams episode, the cash-for-honours allegations, the police investigation into late-declarations by Peter Hain. Nor do I want to excuse the conduct of Derek Conway, the Tory MP who seems to have given his son public money for no good reason. (Guido Fawkes has some humble opinions on this matter.)

The comparison merely puts our home-grown scandals in perspective, and maybe helps to clarify why we should care at all. Even if British misconduct is on a smaller-scale, it still involves big misjudgements by our elected officials. That should interest us all.

(For those who are interested, the AP put together a handy list of congressmen convicted of crimes since 1970, which you can see here. There are more than a dozen convictions, including extortion and sex with an underage campaign worker.)

Peter Hain’s resignation was inevitable once the police were called in to look into the shambolic financing of his doomed attempt to become Labour’s deputy leader. After coming fifth in the contest (who came sixth? Can’t remember), he must be wishing he hadn’t bothered.

But the big question at Westminster this afternoon is whether Gordon Brown will use this as a chance to beef up his cabinet, which many Labour MPs believe is lacking in heavyweights: people who can take the fight to the Tories.

One option would be to bring in a promising middle-ranking minister. Liam Byrne, the able immigration minister, would be an obvious choice but he is hardly a household name. Yvette Cooper, highly trusted by Mr Brown, could be promoted from housing.

The bolder choice would be to bring back in one of the big beasts of the Blair government. There a number of contenders biting their tongues on the backbenches, waiting to be brought back into the fold.

They include Charles Clarke, David Blunkett, Alan Milburn or Stephen Byers. Most have been loyally silent (apart from Mr Clarke, who lapsed but appears to have been forgiven). Mr Byers sued for peace over the Christmas period, saying that Tony Blair was "history".

But is Mr Brown ready to bring these arch-modernisers back into the cabinet, perhaps signalling a shift back towards a more Blairite "choice" agenda?

Normally one would expect the PM to make a speedy choice on Mr Hain’s replacement. We’ll probably find out this afternoon. But don’t rule out - as an outside bet - that Mr Brown’s reputation as a ditherer may apply to his first enforced cabinet reshuffle.

Even in the midst of yet another "sleaze" scandal, it almost seems unfair to compare campaign finance in America and Britain. Before a candidate has even been chosen, enough money has been rustled up in the 2008 US presidential campaign to pay for five  UK general elections.  And - so far - no Britons have found themselves behind bars for breaking electoral laws.

Yet there are some striking similarities in the extraordinary misjudgements made by donors and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic. And some differences that certainly do not bolster the Labour party defence.

Take the story of the Paws. In an outstanding investigation, the Wall Street Journal discovered that one of the biggest sources of funding for Hillary Clinton’s campaign came from a family of six living in a modest house under the flight path of San Francisco airport. Here’s a picture of the Paw house:

The Paw household lived on the income of a postman but managed to scrape together enough pennies to donate more than $200,000 to Democratic candidates.

The family were linked to Norman Hsu, who now sits in prison facing charges of grand theft. Before his fall from grace, Mr Hsu become the "Hillraiser", a title awarded to people who "bundle" donations of more than $100,000 for the Clinton campaign. It is worth comparing the Paw dwelling to the house of Ray Ruddick, seen below.

The jobbing builder and bingo enthusiast  found himself at the centre of a British political storm after donating £196,850 to Labour on behalf of David Abrahams, a wealthy landlord from Newcastle. The blue transit van is owned by Mr Ruddick.

Since the Sunday Mail contacted a startled Mr Ruddick it has emerged that Mr Abrahams channelled money through a total of four associates: a builder, a lollipop lady, a lawyer and a secretary. A bishop and a judge are leading an investigation for the prime minister.

Now the Paws and the Ruddicks are not the first households to be used as "straw men" for overenthusiastic donors to political parties.

The Republicans dug up a string of financing scandals through the 1990s that are so farcical they make the Paws and the Ruddicks look rather boring.

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By Chris Adams

Gordon Brown’s big retreat on the general election has left the Labour party in a hole.

How, with its desperately squeezed finances, can Labour hope to take the fight to a rejuvenated Conservative opposition in 2009 - particularly as Tory candidates will be burning millions of pounds in campaign funding from Lord Ashcroft, their biggest bankroller? It is the Ashcroft millions that most worry Labour MPs in vulnerable marginals, not the apparent lack of policy ideas in Downing Street or even Brown’s brooding image and newly acquired reputation for “spin”.

So worried are they that several tackled the prime minister head-on over the issue at a backroom meeting last week. And, today, there are reports that Mr Brown is ready to act.

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