Tessa, your home is at risk if you fail to keep up payments on a mortgage ...

Tessa Jowell has been 'cleared' of breaching the Ministerial Code. She claims that she did not know that her husband had received a cash 'gift' of $600,000. Probably. She would have us believe that even though she co-signed an application for a mortgage on her family home, she did not know why her husband needed the money. That may be so. She also did not know when the mortgage was paid off by her husband. Really? So Ms Jowell would have us believe that her husband put papers in front of her, and she signed them, without asking questions? Even though she knew that defaulting on a mortgage could lead to her losing her home, she did not think to ask her husband why he needed to mortgage the house, and how and when they were expected to repay the loan? This is not the sort of behaviour one would expect from a woman of average intelligence.

In a situation where a co-owner wishes to mortgage joint property for his business ventures, the lender normally advises the other owner to seek independent legal advice. Did this happen? Did Tessa Jowell seek legal advice before signing, and if so, then it would appear that her lawyer would have reasonably asked her husband for details of how he intended to repay the loan, so as not to jeopardise Ms Jowell's share of the home. If this happened, then I wonder how Tessa Jowell could claim not to know these details. But who knows?

There are many unanswered questions. However, I have come to one conclusion: Tessa Jowell has fallen upon the classic 'female' defence. 'I'm only a woman, I don't understand numbers, my husband deals with the financial side of things'. What a shame. There is something rather pathetic about that. She would rather the public saw her as a foolish, helpless woman. Far better, in my opinion, to be seen as a financially canny woman with a whiff of scandal about her. No one is, after all, accusing her of breaking the law.