April 1992: In another life I was working in Tesco in London’s Leyton High Road. A general election loomed. Feverish expectation had it that Neil Kinnock would be installed in Downing Street. Huge posters adorned the streets of the East End – You Can’t Trust Labour – with a learner’s plate around the ‘L’. I remember thinking, what a silly poster. Wrong! It turned out to be one of the cleverest political campaigns in years.

It was in the midst of a recession. A man came into the supermarket and stole some meat. It was kind of brazen. Perhaps he was drugged or something but he walked out with it. A security guard yelled at him to stop. The man ignored him, shouting "there’s a recession on, mate!" Security guard pursued him and wrestled him to the ground, using perhaps excessive force, causing quite a commotion. I don’t know why but I felt sorry for the shoplifter.

Politicians claiming expenses for ridiculous – and sometimes non-existent – items is theft pure and simple, but on a much greater scale than that of the aforementioned shoplifter. No political chicanery can hide that. Yet the same politicians would doubtless be the first to denounce shoplifters or burglars for stealing comparatively trivial items.

Judging from comment boards in the press, I’ve never seen public discontent with politicians and the establishment so great as it is in Britain right now. In the past I’ve defended politicians from the charge that "they’re all the same". When I was a youngster I pleaded with my co-workers to vote. I said that apathy only maintained the status quo. Sadly, it’s becoming harder to differentiate Labour from Conservative. The cross party revelations about MPs’ expenses mean that all three main parties are likely to suffer at the polls. Norman Tebbit even urges people not to vote for the ‘big three’ in the European elections. Polly Toynbee  –  doyen of Labour commentators – urges Gordon Brown to go. Finally, she gets the message.

Stephen Fry, the voice of the complacent liberal establishment – the type that only supported Labour because he thought they would be more friendly towards gays – asks what’s the big deal, everyone fiddles expenses. "It’s not that important, it really isn’t," he said on the BBC’s Newsnight programme. Such comments make me incandescent. Fry is monumentally mistaken. Hypocrisy and double standards have their limits. Given recent revelations, the Brits would be entitled to descend on parliament en masse and evict the lot. We simply can’t penalise people for shoplifting and then exonerate MPs for stealing on a massive scale. Lawmakers can’t be lawbreakers. The expense claims listed are so farcical that I won’t mention them. Sadly, some are perpetrated by politicians previously deemed principled.  

MPs desperately need to get their big shop in order. Until they do so they’ll never be able to tell that poor shoplifter not to steal the meat from a little shop.