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It's hard to know whether it is worse that the Home Secretary charged her husband's porn movies to the taxpayer - or a bath plug that cost 88p. From helicopter flights to oven gloves, holiday homes to patio heaters, flat-screen TVs to toothbrush holders, it seems that MPs move effortlessly from the sublime to the ridiculous when filling in their expenses claims. The voters watch, astonished, and wonder how George Orwell's pronouncement in Animal Farm that “all animals are equal but some are more equal than others” has come true thanks to something called the John Lewis list. Of course it is wrong for MPs to exploit the system, if that is what they are doing - although the truth is that most of them are not. But the expenses row is a dangerous red herring. The public's irritation with parliamentary claims for proverbial kitchen sinks (Habitat stone) is a symptom of a wider loss of trust in the political system; it is not the cause of the problem itself. And the politicians' response to the row is just making the whole thing worse. They are fiddling with their expenses while all around them the country burns. On the eve of last week's crucial Budget, Gordon Brown used a video post on YouTube to announce that he wanted to replace the second homes allowance with a new daily payment for MPs. Presumably the Prime Minister hoped to give the impression of Susan Boyle-style authenticity by speaking directly to the nation, but in truth the whole thing was a cynical manoeuvre. Had Mr Brown really wanted to deal with MPs' expenses in an objective, non-partisan manner he would have left the matter to the independent review, chaired by Sir Christopher Kelly, that he himself set up. His real intention was to distract from the dire public borrowing figures that were going to be announced the next day, to present himself as Mr Clean after the smeargate affair and to wrong-foot Labour's opponents. It was precisely the sort of petty politicking that alienates the voters even more than MPs' allowances. The tactic backfired. Yesterday Mr Brown was forced to abandon the planned vote in order to avoid an embarrassing defeat. Even the Budget itself seemed almost childishly point-scoring. At a time when the country is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, the Government's priority is the introduction of a 50p top rate of tax, a measure that appears to be less about raising money (according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies the Treasury could actually lose revenue) than embarrassing the Conservatives. Meanwhile, the Chancellor and the Prime Minister continue to insist that “efficiency savings” will be enough to fill a black hole that threatens to gobble up our children. And Harriet Harman is going back to class war. The impression is left that Mr Brown is more interested in dividing lines than the bottom line. David Cameron may be promising a fresh start but he is not being much more open. The Tory leader talks about the importance of thrift but he will not say what he would do to tackle the deficit if he were in No 10. He claims that he will be tough on public spending without specifying what he would cut. Again there is a lack of transparency. The Conservatives seem more interested in winning power than in levelling with voters. But people have a right to know, in broad terms, if not in detail, how a party that hopes to form a government would bring down the debt levels - otherwise they will be voting blind on polling day. The Came