So, the former health minister, Joe Cassar, has resigned from Parliament in the wake of accusations that he categorically denies: that, when minister, he received gifts from Joseph Gaffarena that he was duty-bound to refuse.

Is this a triumph for our standards?

Let me explain the question. I’m not asking whether it’s a pity that Cassar had to resign, given his qualities. I’m ignoring the accusation and counter-accusation, between government and Opposition, of double standards.

I’m asking whether the standard in itself is desirable. Are we showing high standards when we demand what was demanded in the Cassar case: expulsion from the PN parliamentary group or resignation from Parliament?

In Europe, a sitting minister would be expected to resign if ministerial ethics were breached. But that a former minister is expected to pay the price demanded of Cassar must strike any other European observer as draconian. It’s not a penalty applied in any functioning democracy. You’ll find it nowhere else in Europe.

It’s a standard we are setting up all by ourselves. Perhaps it is because we’re at the cutting edge of standards. Or perhaps, as I suspect, it is because there is a general lack of them. The draconian reaction is the disproportion you get when operating in a vacuum.

Admittedly, in many parts of Europe the standards of political and personal responsibility are lower than they should be. The most popular politician in France right now is the former prime minister Alain Juppé, who a dozen years ago was found guilty of abuse of public funds, given a suspended sentence of 18 months and forbidden from seeking political office for ten years (the sentence was on appeal reduced to 14 months and the political interdiction to one year).

But Juppé was not kicked out of his political party. (He was widely seen as having taken the fall for his boss, the then President Jacques Chirac.) He now has a shot at becoming President in 2017.

You can argue about France. No one doubts that the standards operating in the UK are among the highest. And it is there that two cases have arisen in the last two decades that bear some resemblance to the Cassar case.

Insisting that Cassar was duty-bound to resign from the parliamentary group or Parliament is saying: the sanctions for a backbencher should be harsher than for a sitting minister

In the mid-1990s, there was the case of Jonathan Aitken, who as a junior minister for defence procurement was found – by The Guardian newspaper – to have spent two nights at the Paris Ritz while having his bill of around £800 picked up by a Saudi businessman.

The case ended up with Aitken’s imprisonment but that was because the unanswered questions about the bill led to the discovery of a far more serious case of corruption involving millions in arms procurement.

The issue of the bill itself was described in this way by Peter Preston (The Guardian editor when the story broke “A scandal? Hardly: only the lies, the long trail of lies, made it so.”

Cassar is charged with having a bill of €8,150 picked up by Gaffarena, which is rather more than £800 (although that was several times larger than the amount permitted by the ministerial code). But, if you think it’s the amount not the principle that matters, there is the case of the first resignation of Peter Mandelson from the British Cabinet in 1998.

Mandelson was found to have taken an interest-free loan of £373,000 from a Labour colleague of his, Geoffrey Robinson. The problem: Mandelson did not declare the loan in his register of interests, which was not a trivial detail given that his ministry needed to investigate Robinson’s business dealings.

Mandelson denied involvement in the investigation but the idea that it might have been influenced by his debt to Robinson made Mandelson’s position untenable. Was he kicked out of the Labour Party in parliament? No. In fact, his return to the Cabinet after a discreet passage of time was widely (and correctly) expected.

In fact, there are only two kinds ofpeople who have been suspended from their political party or parliamentary group in the UK in the last 25 years.

First, there have been MPs who voted against their own party in a crucial vote – the (temporary) withdrawal of the whip, as it is called, was seen as uncontroversial in the circumstances.

Second, there have been MPs found fiddling with their parliamentary expenses or breaking the law. Some got away with declaring that they would stand down at the following general election.

In more clamorous cases – such as of Dennis McShane, found to have submitted false receipts – there was also resignation from the House of Commons. But this was in the knowledge that a court case followed by imprisonment was inevitable. Likewise, Chris Huhne, a former Liberal Democrat cabinet minister, resigned as MP after entering a guilty plea to perverting the course of justice 10 years earlier.

In other words, even in the UK, the demand that Cassar be kicked out of the parliamentary group or Parliament itself would be seen as draconian – something reserved for far more grave matters. (If it turns out that he has been lying to defend himself, things would be different; but the problem would be the cover-up, not the original deed.)

Before Cassar resigned, it was argued that he needed to make a meaningful sacrifice for his error.

Since he wasn’t a minister anymore, nor a member of the Opposition frontbench, he had to give up something else, and the only memberships he had left was that of the parliamentary group and Parliament.

But this is to show utter incomprehension of the principle of taking political responsibility. Its focus is the withdrawal of political power from someone who has abused it. Members of the Opposition already have very little political power to lose. It is up to voters at the next general election to decide what to do with them.

Arguing the contrary has perverse consequences. It is surely worse for one’s political career to be expelled from the party, or to resign as MP – which spells the end of the political career – than it is to resign a Cabinet seat.

Whoever insists that Cassar was duty-bound to resign from the parliamentary group or Parliament is effectively saying this: the sanctions for a backbencher should be harsher than for a sitting minister (who only needs to resign from the Cabinet).

That is an interesting standard but it’s not European, whose standards of accountability are proportionate, consistent and applicable to all. It is more reminiscent of Saudi Arabia: draconian, selective, with harsh punishment meted out in the name of the highest standards – to cover up the rot at the core.

ranierfsadni@europe.com