I have to confess I’ve struggled to get quite as emotionally caught up in this as some people. Those of us who stand for parliament do so with an underlying notion of public service. Of course we want our party to win. And there is always personal ambition: we want to be in there, making the decisions, with our fingers on the turning of the world. But nobody would go through the five weeks of gruelling punishment, preceded by four years of selection and campaigning, preceded in turn by how ever many years of becoming involved and going through a candidate approval process, unless there was more than simply the desire for our team to win.

Nick Clegg was always honour-bound to make his decision in the nation’s best interests. Anything less would have simply ruled him unfit to be a party leader.

The only question was: what decision would be in the nation’s best interests?

I will put my cards on the table: after last year’s expenses debacle, and this year’s scandal over the Ashcroft million, electoral reform seems to me to be one of the nation’s most important and pressing concerns. The result of the General Election — no clear majority in parliament, nothing like a majority in the popular vote (Tories polled only 12% more than Lib Dems, lest we forget, but gained more than five times as many seats) — demonstrates very clearly that the public are not satisfied.

But, although pressing, electoral reform is not the most pressing concern. I do not accept the view of the scaremongerers that Britain is about to go the way of Greece. David Cameron has already had to eat his words that a hung parliament would spell economic disaster. But it is true that the economy is right at the top of the list of things that need to be fixed now, and fixed right.

A coalition with Labour was always a long-shot, and Clegg was right to honour his election pledge and talk first to the party with the most votes. But he was also right to at least attempt a deal with Labour. This was not treachery, as some of the Tory press and some of my own correspondents have suggested, but a necessary and entirely honourable step: Clegg was duty bound to explore both feasible possibilities as he decided for the United Kingdom who should be the next prime minister.

For the record, I think it would have been possible to do it. (I do not say that it would have necessarily been the best thing, but I do say that it would have been possible). Those who argued that this was undemocratic forget the very shaky ground on which they stand: Labour and the Lib Dems between them gained more than 50% of the popular vote, although, because of our misrepresentative system, this was not quite 50% of the seats in parliament. Labour certainly seemed ready to promise a much swifter, much surer route to electoral reform. And Gordon Brown nobly was willing to accept Nick Clegg’s other election promise — that, whatever happened, Brown would not continue as Prime Minister.

But it was Labour MPs themselves who made it quite clear that they had no real interest in staying in government. From the point that (then, still) government ministers went on the record in public stating this, the chances of a deal with Labour were over.

Many Lib Dem voters find the coalition with the Conservatives distasteful. I personally remained on good terms with all the candidates in the Stratford election, except for the BNP who never attended any of the debates and with whom I never spoke. But there have been instances where Tory attacks were brutal and unfounded. And we have endured the jeers and scorn of the Tory press barons for more than a generation.

It is certainly true that very few will have voted Lib Dem with the aim of putting David Cameron in government.

But Nick Clegg still had to put the nation’s interest ahead of his own. The choice between a Conservative minority government which would be almost certain to fall in recriminations within six months, in which time it would have made little real progress in tackling the economic crisis, and none at all in electoral reform, or a true Lib Dem Con coalition, was one that simply could not be made in any other way from the way it has been made.

The solution is not perfect. David Cameron could have divested himself of the lacklustre George Osborne. If having Vince Cable as chancellor was too much to swallow (though it would have pleased the nation, and the markets), Ken Clarke was waiting in the wings, the only member of Cameron’s team who had ever served in a senior role in a government. There could have been (and should have) a commitment to a referendum on true electoral reform, not merely the disproportional Alternative Vote (AV) system. If the Conservatives believe that the public has no appetite for electoral reform, then they should have agreed to a referendum on the real issue. If they were willing to accept a grudging compromise and no more, they should have offered a simple bill on AV as Labour did, and left it at that. The nation is to be put to the trouble and expense of a referendum without being allowed to vote on the real topic of discussion.

Nonetheless, the prospect of an autumn election has receded to the horizon. Cameron’s lightweight team will be strongly bolstered by 5 Lib Dem cabinet ministers, and a total of 20 Lib Dems across his ministries.

Lib Dem fortunes at the next election will almost certainly suffer, and there will equally certainly be a spate of recriminations and even member-resignations. And this is the true mark of Nick Clegg’s leadership: at personal cost, he has put the interests of the nation first.

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David Cameron has been pedalling the line that a hung parliament would be an unfair and undesirable result given that the Tories deserve to win. But, really, he has not got over the fact that, six months ago, he was nine points ahead in the polls. He is probably (though with certain rather obvious reservations) right that it would have been unfair for him to be neck and neck with Labour in terms of numbers of seats with a nine point lead — always providing that we accept that someone who scores a third of the vote should deserve to get more than half the seats. But his idea that it is unfair for him to not win the election when he doesn’t even poll the highest number of votes is patently absurd.

Cameron needs to have a good long look at himself. He paints himself as a liberal, progressive, ‘changed Conservative’. But, in reality, his entire approach to the election is that Labour has been in for 13 years and it’s now ‘his turn’.

It is not his turn. He has failed to persuade the majority of voters that he is Prime Ministerial material.

On tonight’s poll, based on the BBC’s uniform swing seat calculator, Tories would get 285 seats, Labour 182, and Lib Dems 157. Others would get 26. Cameron would not only be far short of the seats he needs to win, but would also be far short of the seats he needs to form a government with all of the ‘others’ as coalition partners, enabling him to side-step the question of a coalition with the Lib Dems and the requirement for proportional representation.

In any case, the Lib Dems are not offering anyone a coalition. As Nick Clegg has repeatedly pointed out, the electorate must decide who they want to run the country. Cameron does not seem to get this: his notion that he has some implicit right to be the next prime minister based on the same poll as his (now) main competitor is laughable. His notion that this status quo ought to continue until some serendipitous roll of the dice gives him that role is worse than laughable.

That 36:36:24 yields a result of 157:285:182 is surely the most compelling demonstration that our electoral system does not properly reflect the will of the people. Britain is demanding change — and real, not cosmetic, change.

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YouGov: Cameron 36 per cent, Clegg 32 per cent, Brown 29 per cent

ComRes: Clegg 33 per cent Brown 30 per cent, Cameron 30 per cent.

Angus Reid: Clegg 35 per cent, Cameron 32 per cent, Brown 23 per cent.

Populus: Cameron 36 per cent, Clegg 36 per cent, Brown 27 per cent.

This comes hard on the heels of a nasty smear campaign run this morning in the national press, alleging that Clegg had acted improperly when, in fact, Clegg had not only acted properly but had also fully declared everything he was doing.

Cameron needed a knock-out blow tonight, and his spin-doctors had more or less promised one. He did not get it, and the ‘Clegg effect’ is set to grow.

On the streets, I have been amazed by the overwhelming welcome I’ve been getting since last Thursday. I went round a school this afternoon and was treated like a rock-star by children who (I guess) probably didn’t know who Nick Clegg was eight days ago, and certainly had no real interest in the Liberal Democrats.

It is changing. It is changing!

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If this were replicated in an election (of course, it won’t be, but the illustration is still valid), it would result, according to the BBC website’s calculator, in 530 seats for the Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons — a majority of 410 seats: a landslide beyond all conception and all precedent.

Liberal Democrats were, of course, looking for Clegg to make up ground tonight. Brown is generally considered to be undervalued and Cameron overvalued, a view not supported by tonight’s public response. Conventional wisdom suggested that Clegg needed to be up with the others, and it would do Lib Dems good because of the exposure. But the scale of the Nick Clegg result was absolutely devastating: an absolute majority of votes in one poll, an equal vote with the other two parties combined in the other.

Where did the debate landslide victory come from?

There were three factors, I think.

First, Nick Clegg made a point of answering the question. I followed the BBC comments page while watching the debate, and — leaving aside the obviously partisan comments — this was commented on again and again. He not only answered the question, but made a point of looking at and referring to the questioner to see if they thought he was answering the questions. Brown famously jibed at Cameron ‘this is answer time, not question time’, and, certainly, Cameron’s unwillingness to give an actual answer told against him. But Brown’s own attempts fell flat as well. My feeling is that Brown really was trying to answer the questions from time to time, but he was held up by his own opaque language: beginning a sentence with “Net inward immigration…” three times does not make for a good connection with viewers.

Second, the Lib Dem manifesto published this week was a clear winner in terms of the power it gave to Clegg over the other two. The manifesto sets out in detail exactly what the Lib Dems would spend and what they would save. Neither Labour nor the Tories — as Clegg pointed out — included figures in their manifestos. Cameron tried to have a bit of a go about the figures, but it is never easy to argue with a man on his own turf: Clegg knew his manifesto and his figures much better than Cameron did, and Brown made no attempt to overturn the Lib Dem figures at all.

Third, Nick Clegg positioned his two opponents very clearly in his own address as the ‘same old same old parties’. The bickering between Brown and Cameron which followed underlined that again and again. Clegg certainly benefited from the game that Brown and Cameron tried to play. They were almost deferential in their treatment of him, and when Cameron did attempt to question Clegg, it fell rather flat, especially on immigration, which should have been his strongest suit. Brown again and again tried to say that he and Clegg were agreeing. Unfortunately for him, Clegg refused to play along. This was all especially important because, at Prime Minister’s Question Time, the bulk of Tory/Labour jeers are often enough to drown out Clegg’s comments. In a studio, with a studio audience and clear rules, this extraneous factor was taken away.

What difference will all this make? That remains to be seen — over the next few days, as the pundits weave their theories, and as the spin-doctors from left and right attempt to demonstrate (as William Hague is already attempting) that, despite all the opinion polls, their candidate won after all.

There may be more polls tomorrow, and they may give a different result. But, for now, based on this debate only, and without any particular connection with other realities, the result is a clearer victory for Nick Clegg than any Liberal Democrat could have hoped for.

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On Labour and the Tories, she was less kind: “The Labour and Conservative manifestos are very different. Labour’s was big on words – and detailed promises and commitments which we had heard before. It put government at the centre. The Conservative version is longer, but lighter. About a third of its 118 pages actually contains written text – the rest is made up of pictures, fun facts, and (yes) blank pages to give readers a rest. Their focus is on the private sector – and on individuals.

“But the two documents have one important thing in common: neither of them makes any further contribution to public understanding on how Britain’s £167bn budget deficit is going to be cut. And they both leave plenty out.”

The Lib Dem manifesto is about four key policies —

• Fair taxes that put money back in your pocket.
• A fair chance for every child.
• A fair future, creating jobs by making Britain greener.
• A fair deal for you from politicians.

In the words of Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats: “We’ve had 65 years of Labour and the Conservatives: the same parties taking turns and making the same mistakes, letting you down. It is time for something different. It is time for something better.”

The manifesto itself is a pretty hefty document — strengthened, as Stephanie Flanders points out, by pages and pages of detailed costings. This is not pie in the sky, these are workable plans which — if the situation did transpire that we were in government with members of other parties willing to work with us — would form the blueprint for economic recovery. Sustainable economic recovery that is, because, despite the promises of the last four chancellors (Lawson, Clarke, Brown, Darling) the Labour/Conservative or Labservative economics has done nothing but cycle us through boom and bust.

If the full document is more than you want to read right now, here are the key points in a bit more detail:
fair taxes
that put money back in your pocket
• The first £10,000 you earn tax-free: a tax cut of £700 for most people
• 3.6 million low earners and pensioners freed from income tax completely
• Paid for in full by closing loopholes that unfairly benefit the wealthy and polluters

a fair chance
for every child
• Ensure children get the individual attention they need by cutting class sizes
• Made possible by investing £2.5 billion in schools targeted to help struggling pupils
• Give schools the freedom to make the right choices for their pupils

a fair future
creating jobs by making Britain greener
• Break up the banks and get them lending again to protect real businesses
• Honesty about the tough choices needed to cut the deficit • Green growth and jobs that last by investing in infrastructure

a fair deal
by cleaning up politics
• Put trust back into politics by giving you the right to sack corrupt MPs
• Restore and protect hard-won British civil liberties with a Freedom Bill
• Overhaul Westminster completely: fair votes, an elected House of Lords, all politicians to pay full British taxes

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If you’re interested and you want to wade through all the policies, you can make your own mind up. Here’s a link to last summer’s policy guide. Actually, the guide is not very long, and is in (for politicians) relatively clear and unambiguous English.

Policy has not changed very much since then, except for the introduction of the pledge on a ‘mansion tax’ for homes worth £2million or more, which, currently, benefit disproportionately from the highest council tax band being band H. Lib-Dems are still committed to abolishing council tax altogether, so this is an interim measure only.

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Reform is long over due, and the question is not really any more whether it will take place, but how far it will go. At the one end, David Cameron would like to change as little as possible and shift the bulk of changes away from MP remuneration. At the other end, persons such as myself believe it is high time for a fair voting system, a ban on MP second jobs, an expenses system which pays genuine expenses and nothing more, public accommodation for MPs, and an outright ban on profiting from the public purse. These are largely the views shared by Nick Clegg and Vince Cable, names which are curiously untarnished by the current crisis, and who therefore doubly should be listened to.

Reform is all very well (and, very, very essential), but we are missing something more important and more profound. Even if the Daily Telegraph had only been able to point to light bulbs, trouser presses, scotch eggs and the costs of genuine mortgages on second homes which had never been flipped, where the mortgage arrangements had been made to place the least burden on the public purse — even if this had been the case, many people who still have been very angry.

As a general rule, people are angry at politicians, and (in my experience) even angrier at people who are trying to get elected as politicians but who have not yet succeeded. Last year a man stopped me and asked me if I was opposed to some local piece of Tory nonsense. I said I was. This did not satisfy him. “Would you be opposed to it in all possible circumstances?” He asked. I asked him what he meant by that. He insisted that I give him what he called a ‘straight answer’. I tried to explain to him that he could probably come up with some kind of circumstance in which I would change my view, but that I was, as things were, completely opposed, and in any probable circumstance, likely to remain so. He wasn’t at all satisfied, and told me that it was typical of politicians not to give a ‘straight answer’.

But the truth is, I gave him a straight answer straight away. He then changed the question to the point at which no meaningful answer could be given. Why? Possibly he’d seen Paxman do this on television, but, deep down, I think he was secretly disappointed that I had given him a straight answer, and wanted to find some form of the question for which there could be no straight answer, which would then justify his belief that, if I was in politics, I must be trying to trick him.

The funny thing was, this was a man who had never voted, and probably has not voted since.

Do we somehow, for some cathartic sociological reason, need a class of people who are always in the wrong, no matter what they say? Now that people are uncomfortable about sexual, racial, gender, disability or religious stereotyping, are we down to the ultimate outcasts, who can comfortably be blamed in all circumstances without the risk of the critic being criticised for his criticism?

There must surely be more to it than that.

I went to have a meeting about the budget a few weeks ago, with none other than Vince Cable. The first thing he said was that MPs really don’t get to comment on the budget. The budget is set by the government, and either accepted or rejected as a single piece of legislation. Here was the man who probably (and by popular agreement) understands more about our economy than anyone else in Britain, and yet he can have no useful input in setting the budget which is the government’s fundamental economic instrument.

The truth is that parliament is still locked into a medieval mindset, where the will of the crown is put forwards by legislation, and the only restraint on the power of the crown is also legislation. Therefore, all that parliament can do is make laws. In practice, the group in parliament with the greatest number of votes also gets to be the government, which has essentially limitless executive powers (since we have no written constitution), except as limited by parliament’s legislation, or, more likely, by the constraints of time, money, and a guess about what will play well with the electorate.

But very few people, when they talk to would-be MPs on the doorstep, enquire about what legislation they are thinking of passing. Rather, they want to know what they will do if they are in government. This is touching, but fanciful. Most MPs will never be in government, because, even if their party wins a majority, they themselves will be required to play the part of more-or-less loyal backbenchers, or possibly and at best, after the modern fashion, junior ministers who are a sort of lower management between cabinet and civil servants.

Is this really what we want? We are frequently told that the real work of parliament happens in committees, but this is not really the case. In the European parliament this is much more true, but in Westminster, at least in recent years, it seems that committees only have power to embarrass the government, which can still push through its programme if it wants to.

Those who advocate our ‘winner takes all’ style of government claim that it makes for strong governments, and anything else makes for weak government. But this is not borne out by history. Rather, what we saw with both the Thatcher and Blair governments, is that they won initially with big majorities and a huge amount of enthusiasm to unite Britain, seize the day, and do what must be done. But, as their time in office progressed, they gradually ran out of ideas. Thatcher’s reign ended in the debacle of the poll tax, and Blair, though he had the sense to get out while the going was good, would have finished up in the double crisis that Gordon Brown now finds himself in. With nothing to renew them, governments run out of good people, and so are forced to put progressively less suitable (but politically sound) people into key positions. Instead of the campaigning Clare Short, and then the (largely famous because of his father) Hilary Benn, we now have Douglas Alexander as minister for international development. Peter Mandelson, so closely identified with the original Blair victory, has wandered in and out of government, finally finding his way into the Lords. Estelle Morris, the last Secretary of State for Education that anyone can remember, quit the job because she didn’t feel up to it. John Prescott had to go. And so on. I don’t particularly mourn the loss of these people (well, perhaps Estelle Morris a little bit), because, by and large, I feel they were essentially bad at their jobs. But the bright constellation of Blair’s inner circle is now dimmed. Instead of prudent Gordon Brown we now have Alistair Darling, instead of the bright Blair smile we now have dull Gordon. Thatcher’s mob fared no better. By the time John Major came to office (but not, as was often pointed out, to power), there were very few left who could command the public’s respect.

And yet, parliament ought to have been able to attract the brightest and the best from all walks of life. So how come we don’t seem to be able to put together a half decent government?

It is high time for the British system to be transformed. We don’t run an empire any more. We don’t have local landowners representing the interests of their illiterate tenants. We are not trying to hold back the power of the barons, or of an unruly monarch with a penchant for raising taxes to fund more battle ships. Our system is full of checks and balances, but they are largely checks on the wrong things, and balances to forces which no longer exist.

Ask most voters to explain the way in which the Lords, the Commons, the Crown and the Courts interrelate, and they will look at you baffled. But this is not because voters are uninformed, uninterested or unintelligent. The system itself is ludicrously complicated, functions poorly, is hopelessly inefficient, and, as we have too often seen, results in the misapplication of poorly drafted legislation for a result far from the original intention. No wonder voters are apathetic. It would be like asking them to vote on who should drive a train that has no engine, or who should wash the dishes when there is no water.

There is now unprecedented energy in Britain for the debate on what politics is for. But we seem intent on diverting it into a discussion of whether the BNP will benefit from the protest vote, and how poorly Labour might do in a year’s time. These are interesting, to be sure, but bring us no closer to the fundamental reforms without which the last month in politics has been no more than an exercise in mass prudery.

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But all this is just talk. No MP has ceased to be an MP. Even the biggest culprits remain in parliament, collecting their salary and expenses. Only the Speaker, Michael Martin, will actually be leaving the House before a General Election forces the issue.

In the first episode of Yes Prime Minister, Jim Hacker was advised that if we were to make a speech announcing radical change, he should wear a conservative suit and speak sonorous, reassuring words. On the other hand, if his speech announced nothing, it should be an ultra-modern suit with a brash, exciting background. David Cameron, at least, is playing the modern suit and brash background game. He knows that he has by far the most to lose. Before this scandal, the Conservatives had the next election more or less sown up, with new woes striking Gordon Brown’s Voyage of the Damned government every week. Now, although the Daily Telegraph has done its best to point the rhetoric at Labour ministers, it is the Tories who are easily the most damaged: moats, duck islands, money paid for extensions and electronics, money paid to family members who lived too far away to be any help, light bulbs, tennis courts, and so on.

So far he’s talked a good game, but, as in the past when he has been challenged to give real policies on key issues, he has dodged it. It’s not just that he fails to offer something bold and revolutionary. Bold is not always best. It’s that his ‘nip and tuck’ of reforms do not connect at all with the issue of MP’s pay, allowances or expenses. They are all rebadged right-of-centre ideas for laissez-faire politics. Fewer MPs with more power, more opportunities for the government to distance itself from unpopular legislation, extra transparency for civil servants, who are, in any case, not implicated in this row.

So, no MP (except Michael Martin) will be standing down before they have to — remember that the ones who are ‘resigning’ had virtually no chance of surviving the humiliating gauntlet of local anger, so what they are really doing is an exercise in self-preservation. And no policies have been put forward for how MP expenses should be reformed.

For this is the thorny issue. If MPs need two homes, then, contrary to what the BBC would suggest, they are not over-remunerated, but, at least until the housing market collapsed, seriously under-remunerated. If Cameron or Brown puts forward anything anywhere near as radical as the man in the street would like, it will almost certainly be rejected by MPs who, even if they are staring down the barrel of an electoral gun, are not going to vote to bankrupt themselves.

On the other hand, the Taxpayer’s Alliance suggestion (and mine as well, arrived at independently) for simply providing each MP with a residence in London for the duration of their time as MPs, and not beyond, though hugely beneficial to the next round of MPs, who will not be forced to risk their financial futures buying property in an uncertain market, leaves the current crop with a difficult problem. They will either be forced (financially, not legally) to dispose of homes which may be more important to them than their constituency home, or they will have to pay the mortgage on two homes on a salary which would serve them very well in, say, East Birmingham, but would scarcely cover one home in Tunbridge Wells or Maidstone.

Of course, I still favour my own suggestion.

It is Nick Clegg, whose stature as a man of real insight and penetrating decisions has grown substantially over the last weeks, who has probably got the most sensible tack: don’t let the MPs go home for the holidays until they sort it out.

Because, no matter how much we all believe MPs should not be allowed to vote on their own pay and conditions, the changes which must happen right now, if parliament is to recover any semblance of public confidence, must be set out and agreed by themselves. The problems will not go away over the holidays, nor will they become less acute. Unless something genuine and compelling is decided, agreed and enacted before they break up, then public anger will rise throughout the summer. Poor Julie Kirkbride has already had her windows smashed. But, judging by the anger of some of the people I met today in Stratford, that sort of reaction is going to get worse.

And that would take us into entirely new territory — territory which we should avoid, at almost all costs.

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Nick Clegg has taken the historic step of demanding — as a party leader — that the speaker of the House should go. William Hague declined to be as forthright, in his capacity as de facto Tory deputy, but he made it clear that he believes the same thing.

Michael Martin’s conduct has been the poorest of all those not directly implicated in the scandal itself. As a figure independent of government, he should have led the calls for Freedom of Information, and should have led the House (not the government) to deal with people who have made potentially fraudulent claims, or who have arranged their affairs in order to make a profit from the public purse.

Instead, he silenced the voices of dissent.

Martin should go, and he should actually go — not sit around as a back bencher collecting his salary, but leave parliament altogether and make his way in the world.

And then others should go. Not everyone. Certainly not everyone ‘fingered’ by the Daily Telegraph, which seems to have set itself up as an arbiter of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.

For me, three groups of MPs should leave right now:

.

Others can stay — as far as the General Election. Though I’m sure that many, especially older MPs, will choose to stand down rather than face the music. A landslide defeat, which is what many of them will face, will seem an unattractive prospect as the end of their political careers.

As far as I am concerned, suspending people from the government, or from the shadow cabinet, or from their parliamentary parties, is not enough. Those who failed in their duty as MPs must cease to be MPs.

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The Daily Telegraph has now turned its attention to the Lib-Dems.

Let me repeat my call, so that it is absolutely clear that it is made without favouritism or partiality: anyone who has defrauded the public, or has arranged their affairs for personal profit at the expense of the tax-payer, should stand down from parliament now. They should not stand down and fight a by-election, they should simply go. Anyone who, in doing so, has actually broken the law, for example by attempting to profit from a deliberately false claim, should face the full weight of the law.

But let me also reiterate my comments about the Tory who paid £100 for 25 light-bulbs. People who have claimed for things which the public finds bizarre, ludicrous, or even over-blown should face the electorate at the next election. But they should not be tarred with the same brush as those who have attempted to profit from loopholes in the system.

Even more so, people who made incorrect claims but paid them back when they discovered it themselves should not be censured. These include Jack Straw’s council tax, and now (it appears) Nick Clegg’s £80 phone bill. The amount is irrelevant. Someone who has voluntarily arranged to correct a mistake before it was brought to the public’s attention has acted correctly. They should be praised, not blamed. Tarring these people with the same brush as those who ‘flipped’ their second homes in order to make a fast profit is simply immoral.

All revelations about MP expenses are necessarily embarrassing. Just as revelations about a person’s sleeping habits or medical condition are. Most of us don’t really ‘get’ the rules about second homes, and the Daily Telegraph’s campaign has done everything it can to mix up legitimate second home expenses with ‘flipping’ and other sharp practice.

The speaker of the House does not have my sympathy. He has failed to maintain the impartiality of his office, and become emotionally involved in a crisis he should have helped to solve. But I do have some sympathy with his frustration. The Telegraph’s campaign has done its best to present all MPs as untrustworthy. They are not. Likewise, it has tried to pour ridicule where it cannot demonstrate impropriety.

I say again: a just response to this situation requires distinction. Resignations from those who have abused the public trust. A recognition from the public that those who have not abused it are still worthy of that trust.

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