For a while, though, MacKay thought he could hang on. He held a public meeting in his Bracknell constituency from which he banned the national press and television cameras. As he left, he told the thwarted journalists that although, of course, there had been disquiet, three-quarters of attendees had accepted his explanations. His attempt at old-fashioned media management did him no good. Franck Marceteau, of the Bracknell Forest Standard, had upheld the finest traditions of journalism by slipping a camera into the meeting and uploading a video on to the paper's website the next day. 

The footage does not show that the English have turned into a know-nothing mob, ready to destroy anyone associated with the old order, as more fevered commentators believe. On the contrary, the Bracknell audience was infuriated by the decline of the values of the old order, which they had thought MacKay, a public-school boy who looks every inch an officer and a gentleman, embodied. "I think it's a very sad day," one middle-aged man told him. "I've been involved in politics for 20 years and I've always argued that it's a good vocation. We all raise children and grandchildren and try and instil moral values, and basically I think a number of you, you in particular, have been on the make." Repeatedly, MacKay's constituents emphasised the importance of the traditional value of equality before the law. "I employ accountants to do my books," said one man, who grew tired of MacKay's excuse that the fees' office had approved his expenses. "If anything goes wrong, it's me who goes to jail, not my accountant." They talked of the importance of "trust", "judgment", "a sense of right and wrong" and "living with your conscience". They did not want to subvert the system but blamed their MP for disgracing it. "Because of the action of people like you, we could end up with extremists." Throughout the hall, there was a deep sense that the political class had been taking the mickey. "You can't get away with this," said one speaker. "You are not entitled," shouted another.

The only speaker who did not follow tradition was a middle-aged man, who said that his 16-year-old daughter had come to him in tears and told him she had given her virginity to a boyfriend who had betrayed her. The audience giggled because the English middle classes are not meant to broadcast family secrets. But when he told MacKay that in trusting him he had trusted an equally worthless man, they agreed and applauded.

At last, a man stood up and connected the dots between Westminster and the City. "When the main challenge facing us is the credit crunch caused by greed," he cried, "how can you convince anybody that you are the right person to represent us?"

And that, surely, got to the root of it. However many honest MPs have been falsely accused, people know a systemic failure when it hits them. Politicians who are furtively enriching themselves will not worry about furtive enrichment in high finance. Nor will they act to stop the national debt piling up and quangocrats pocketing £250,000 a year for work that could be done as well by civil servants at one-quarter of the price.