Moral authority in politics?

Shocking news from Scotland. According to Alex Salmond, First Minister,

political institutions have lost their "moral authority" in the row over MPs' expenses

I beg to differ. Politicians lost their moral authority long ago. Before any of these expense scandals came out, trust in our politicians was at an all time low, and they were regarded as a money-grabbing sell-outs. People thought that they were crooks before. After the expense scandal, people know that they are crooks.

All of these politicians calling for the 'trust' to be rebuilt are living a fantasy. There was no widespread trust before, and there is almost none now. Publishing expenses doesn't rebuild the trust, it just means that we, the public, get to watch how they are spending our money because we definitely don't trust them to do it in private.

Do our political elites really think that paying money back and publishing expenses is seen as anything more than damage limitation? The fact is that they would NEVER have paid the money back OR published their expenses in detail if it hadn't been for the Telegraph.

If our politicians really want to build trust, they will need to be consistently trust-worthy over a very long period of time. Deselecting every single MP who has had to pay money back is only the first step. That includes David Cameron.

And next they need to surprise us. Reacting to public anger is not going to build the trust. We need innovative leadership.

The Stamp Out Sleaze campaign from Libertas is a good start, but it needs to be applied in practice. Unless we have MEPs and MPs following the principles and leading by example, we will be stuck with the same old politicians stuck in the same rut.