Richard Sharp is out at the BBC: now can we think about how we hold other miscreants to account?

theguardian.com:

W hat have the now former chair of the BBC, the Labour veteran Diane Abbott and the ousted chancellor Nadhim Zahawi all got in common? Indeed, what do they share with Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab and Matt Hancock?

The answer is that they have all been accused of things that so upset people as to cause them to lose or risk losing their jobs. Failing to disclose having facilitated a loan, enjoying an unwise liaison, holding a contentious opinion: the misbehaviour in question varies, but all was deemed sufficiently significant to risk ruining their reputations or future careers – or at least for their organisations to be under pressure to see them depart to appease its critics.

I will say nothing in their defence. All seem “guilty as charged” and I am happy for them to be told so to their faces. They broke the subtle web of acceptability we now weave around those in power, potentially trapping them at every turn. Perhaps Zahawi entered his income in the wrong tax column. Perhaps the BBC’s Richard Sharp should have told some committee he was a buddy of Johnson. Certainly, in any job, however much you may like your colleagues, it is advisable not to have sex with them.

But do the punishments fit the crime? Is Abbott’s explosive letter to the Observer enough to bring a distinguished career to a shameful end? If Hancock was qualified to be health minister, was the (presumably illegal) leaking of security pictures of a private embrace sufficient to wipe that qualification?

Break the law of the land and the law stipulates you can hope for a fair trial, due punishment and hope of rehabilitation. We no longer flog or deport those convicted of stealing rabbits, or shut them in stocks and pelt them with rotten vegetables. Yet that is the