This disdain is a result of far more than expenses

One thing that the new Speaker must remember is that the expenses scandal has hardened—not created—the public’s contempt for Parliament. As Camilla Cavendish writes today,

“one of the reasons public anger goes a lot deeper than Sir Peter Viggers’s duck pond is because we feel we can no longer change our laws by voting out politicians. The EU machine marches on, constraining everything from the future of the Post Office to what vitamins we can take. The promised referendum on the Lisbon treaty has been ditched. The quango nanny state has acquired a momentum of its own. Politicians have given away powers that they held in trust for the people. They cannot be altogether surprised if people now lump them all together in impotent fury.”