Talking to long-term tame, if amusing, Labour-leaning pundit, Andrew Marr, this morning, Prime Minsiter Gordon Brown said he will impose a Code of Conduct to which MPs wll have to agree.

In an incoherent interview  – in which Brown also managed to include the NHS and the BBC – he came up with this rambler to give Wisteria a run for its money:

‘…what we’ve seen means that only the openness which came from the Freedom of Information Act, only that openness, is the means by which you can find out what’s happening and then you’ve got to have proper discipline. I’m appalled. I’m shocked by what happened’.

Having this week farmed the death of his daughter Jennifer for the second time in his own political interests, Brown chose this morning to drag in his ‘Presbyterian conscience’. This is the man who gave Tony Blair the money to take us into Iraq – uncharacteristically without a quibble, hoping the initiative would bury Blair and careless of how many others it was certain to bury. The majority of Presbyterians would probably see their consciences rather differently.

However rambling, Brown’s attempt to convey the impression of shock and of a determination to hold MPs to account should be read in the light of what he told The Independent on Thursday this week (28th May). Decode this:

‘We are going to clean up the political system. We are never again going to have a situation where MPs are put in this position, where they sign their own expenses and have to do it all on their own and getting into mistakes which then have to be corrected’.

There’s the smack of firm government for you. Those poor MPS, put in this position, having to do it all on their own, having to sign their ow expenses claims (like take responsibility) -  and getting into mistakes… All together now: Ahhhh….

This makes it certain that Brown will take no action at all against the senior Ministers who led by example in manipulating rules to their advantage – the double dipping Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper; the multiple house-flipper, Alistair Darling; the second home manipulators, Jacqui Smith and Tony McNulty; house-flippers and Capital Gains Tax avoiders, Geoff Hoon and James Purnell… while throwing surplus-to-quota catch like Margaret Moran over the side. Hazel Blears’ actions were ‘utterly unacceptable’ but seem now to have been mysteriously recast.

While all those caught with sticky fingers in the banknote pile now sing in unison in their condemnation of the system that somehow tricked them and led them astray, there is a salutary point of comparison.

MP’s at the bottom of the list of total amounts claimed for 2007-2008, like Labour’s Dennis Skinner and the Tory Philip Hollobone were subject to the same corrupting system. How come they avoided the contamination?