Even though he was found to have used his Health Services Union card — funded by the membership fees of some of Australia’s lowest paid workers — on everything from prostitutes to his 2007 federal election campaign.

Thomson, who has just witnessed the birth of his third daughter, Florence, sat down with wife Zoe in their first interview together in an attempt to draw a line in the sand.

“This has been our most relaxed pregnancy — it’s been the only one we haven’t been chased by media,” Mrs Thomson said.

“Whatever people think, we’ve moved on and so should they,” he said.

He still defiantly says he was given a union credit card with no restrictions on how to use it and later framed, ­despite images of credit card payment slips bearing his signature and driver’s licence number and phone records showing calls made between his ­Bateau Bay home and Sydney brothels being on the internet for years.

Asked why he did not just throw his hands up and admit it, Thomson said he would still be fighting today had he not “run out of money”.

“One, you think it’s going to work out, you don’t realise how stacked things are against an individual in the legal system,” he said.

“The second issue (was), I didn’t want to see Tony Abbott as PM. If I left parliament that would have happened.”

So there you have it.

He stayed in the Parliament because Tony Abbott would have become PM if he got the flick.

Which explains everything about the $400,000 odd in Craig Thomson personal legal bills that the Labor Party paid.

Despicable.