Could the current crisis over MPs expenses bring down the government? The short answer is probably not. But note I said 'probably'.

This is a significant crisis with extremely serious ramifications. Political crises such as these do not come along that often, nor last this long. Nor incidentally are so many MPs usually embroiled. It is usually one party that is revealed to be acting in an underhand manner, or one MP who happens to have embarrassing facts revealed about his or her sexual fetishes, drug habit, outside interests or general dodgy dealings.

Yesterday, during prime ministers questions, backbench MP Tony Wright asked Gordon Brown whether having had the 'Rump parliament', the 'Long parliament' and the 'Addled parliament', we might not be in danger of having the 'Moat parliament' or the 'Manure parliament'.

It was a pertinent question given the number of MPs that appear to be up to their necks in.....well...you get the idea. The problem is no-one seems to have handed the poor

This is how David Cameron painted the battle lines: he represents quick, decisive action, while Gordon Brown represents faceless bureaucracy.

It's an easy assessment to sympathise with. Yesterday was a case in point, with Labour announcing letters to a cross-party committee to deal with MPs' expenses while the Tory leader simply forced his frontbenchers to pay back the money and instigated thorough internal reform of the party.

But during prime minister's questions today, Cameron suggested some very awkward and questionable things. He introduced two new areas to the debate: MPs' communications allowance (£10,000 a year) and how many MPs sit in the Commons.

Brown said the communications allowance was decided on by a Commons vote, and that if it was to be scrapped, it had to be decided by the Commons. Any boundary changes should be investigated by an independent committee, not just by him ordering the Boundaries Commission to do it. "What we need is leadership," Cameron responded

You couldn't ask for a better example of how tired and useless Labour has become, and how efficient and talented David Cameron is at dealing with bad situation.

Things look bad for everyone. Labour and Conservatives have had four days of being beaten to a bloody pulp by Telegraph front pages. Both are stuck, in the mud, with no honour and no love.

This is what Harriet Harman did (no-one knows where Gordon Brown is). She sent a letter to a cross-party committee calling for clarification on the rules for 'flipping' and to specify the process by which those who had broken the rules - actually very few - would pay back the money. The response only confirmed the impression most people have of Labour - that it is bureaucratic, faceless and timid. It also did pitifully little about the problem.

This is what Cameron did. He called his front bench together and gave them the hair-dryer treatment. He called a press conference in which he appeared visibly angry, resolute, tough, practical, and in

The Speaker can do a pretty good impression of the Wolf from the nursery tale involving the three little piggies every once in a while. He huffs, he puffs and he threatens - albeit occasionally - to blow an MP's house down.

He rarely actually goes through with the threat, being one of the least formidable Speakers the House has seen in some time. But he actually appeared to achieve what he so often threatens, to Kate Hoey, of all people.

No doubt incensed by her lack of party loyalty for her attack on Barbara Follett, the tourism minister, at the weekend, Mr Martin entered into an angry exchange with the backbencher and gave her a very public dressing down. Mr Martin, of course, is supposed to be non-partisan when it comes to his duties so one wonders why he attacked Hoey in quite such terms. Could it really be for the sin of asking whether the Metropolitan Police have better things to do with their time than investigate who the source of the leaks to the Telegraph newspaper over MPs

And so the spotlight turns to the Tories, with a range of frontbenchers implicated in the expenses scandal. About time too. The Tories have serious questions to answer on this topic, and they're not about Alan Duncan's pot plants.

We're told David Cameron has a clean sheet. He has only 20 pages of expenses, for instance, compared to up to 90 pages for some of his colleagues. True, as far as it goes. But Mr Cameron did decide to charge the public for the clearing of vines from his chimney and the replacing of some exterior lights. He tots up around £20,000 a year on his second home claims.

We're told William Hague, Cameron's deputy and the shadow foreign secretary, has a clean sheet. True, as far as it goes, but My Hague earns hundreds of thousands of pounds outside parliament. More on this in a moment.

We're told George Osborne has a clean sheet. This is half true. The shadow chancellor claimed £440 for a chauffer to take him from Cheshire to London. He also charged the taxpayer £30 to

It was a culture problem, we're told. Everyone was doing it. That excuse didn't work with the banking crisis and it certainly won't work now.

Whether on the economy or the expenses disaster, things have gone horribly, horribly wrong for the government. Both issues have seen a blame game played out before the nation's media. Both have seen ministers shrug their collective shoulders, desperately pointing the finger elsewhere.

The defence isn't likely to work in either case come the election.

Case number one, m'lud: the economy. Ministers understandably licked their lips nervously when it took a nosedive last year. The Treasury committee's inquiry in recent months resembled a trial, with journalists, ministers and bankers summoned to plead 'it wasn't our fault'.

But regulatory failure hopelessly tainted the credibility of government arguments to this effect. It was a culture thing, ministers pleaded. Everyone thought debt was no longer dangerous. Please don't blame us.

That's the argument

There are some opinions you hold for longer than you believe in them. That's the relationship I've had with talk of a British constitution.

At the start of my adult life I sat in a class with a rather wonderful, and very elderly, legal expert who explained to us how British law works. The UK has no constitution, he said, because everything is legal in the UK unless the government says otherwise. The default status is freedom. Our freedoms were not granted to us by government. Rather, the government has to justify any freedom it takes away. Countries with a constitution, such as the United States, operate on a different idea, that your rights are granted to you.

This struck me as a particularly lovely distinction. It seemed to typify the eccentric breadth of British freedom, and that feeling of being hugely privileged to be born British, a subject in the freest country on Earth. I clung to it for a long time, and often repeated it, particularly when debates about a constitution came

'Ombudsman.' It's one of those words, like 'sustainable' or 'quantitative', that dampens rather than ignites the political passions of the man on the street.

But it certainly hasn't dampened the views of the Equitable Life policyholder. Those who lost out when the life insurance provider nearly collapsed in 2000 have pinned their hopes on Ann Abraham's efforts to obtain a remedy for the injustice they have suffered.

Ms Abraham is the parliamentary ombudsman. Her job is to investigate complaints that government departments "have not acted properly or fairly".

In July 2008 she did just that, and concluded this was precisely what had happened in the case of Equitable Life. Full compensation for those who lost out as a result of regulatory failure was required, she said.

The government is refusing to give this to them.

So yesterday Ms Abraham laid a second follow-up report on the issue before parliament. The government's response, she said, had been "deeply disappointing". It had