Britain's most important political commentator is Ian Hislop and he paints Britain's MPs as "corrupt, second-rate and incompetent"...

By Tim Montgomerie
Follow Tim on Twitter.

...so says Martin Kettle in todays Guardian.

Kettle says that from his chair on BBCtv's Have I Got News For You, the Editor of Private Eye relentlessly paints politicians as "corrupt, deluded, incompetent, second-rate and hypocritical":

"Hislop's message is delivered with enviable deftness and wit, and very often it is irresistible. But it is also good-naturedly merciless. And extremely repetitive. There is never any sign that Hislop allows of exceptions; or that he has a political hero; or even, with the occasional honourable mention for Vince Cable, that there are politicians whom he respects. The impression he always gives is that today's politicians are uniformly unworthy of their inheritance, not to be compared with some previous golden age of statesmanlike effectiveness."

Read the full piece and discuss.