HAS DAVID Cameron or his advisers ever stopped to ask themselves why, exactly, he’s not seen as a trustworthy person by a large number of voters?

Today’s vacuous nonsense is a perfect example of why he’s still not taken seriously as a potential Prime Minister; his remarks about Gordon Brown and the MPs (and Tory peer) charged over their expenses could have been drafted by Sarah Palin’s nanny speechwriter.

I know of no-one – the Prime Minister included – who approves of the attempt to use parliamentary privilege to escape prosecution. The issue of privilege in general is one that is of great concern and interest and should be publicly debated. But I don’t think it’s appropriate for politicians, let alone the Prime Minister himself, to seek to interfere in a criminal case that is currently active.

What’s more, the final decision as to whether the accused individuals are able to resort to privilege is not a political decision to be made by ministers; it is a legal one to be decided by the courts, one that must be taken in accordance with statute as it existed at the time of the alleged offences.

So should we be surprised that Cameron, under pressure from his own party because of the recent narrowing of the poll gap and his poor performances at PMQs, has resorted to this kind of desperate tactic? Of course not. None of the parties has emerged well from the expenses scandal, but Cameron obviously believes that a narrative of “a plague on all your houses” might be converted to “this happened on Labour’s watch” so long as he affects a tone of wounded outrage and indignation, implausible and unjustified thought that may be.