TODAY our MPs decide who is going to be the next Speaker of the House of Commons. The most suitable candidate will be the one who has a fresh face, fresh ideas and a refreshing dose of bravery.

It will be someone who is prepared to talk tough to MPs, to tell them it is not right that they have extravagant London apartments with plasma TVs that cost the taxpayers thousands of pounds.

It will be someone who tells them that gardening, cleaning and £400 of food a month are not acceptable expenses.

It will be someone with radical thoughts about the solution – why can’t out-of-town MPs lay their heads in a comfortable block of taxpayer-owned apartments?

It will be someone who is prepared to tackle their colleagues about the unsuitability of their lucrative second, third and fourth jobs, and to lay down some ground rules – another of voters’ great bugbears is MPs who don’t live in the community they are elected to represent.

But equally, the new speaker will be someone who is prepared to talk tough to the taxpayer. Because it is not right to pay MPs – supposedly some of the best brains in the country – £64,000-a-year to decide whether to take the country to war when the chief executive of a small North-East council is on double that to keep the grass in the park cut.

Sadly, in making their choice, MPs have few real options. Too many candidates are tired old re-treads nearing the end of a career spent cocooned in the Commons’ old boys club. Such candidates are unlikely to be fresh or brave.

Perhaps the best option is an interim Speaker to steer the ship through to the next election.

In the coming months, a groundswell can grow behind the most popular ideas for reform. The election will then sweep away the discredited old guard, leaving a new generation of MPs to choose a Speaker who will be brave enough to force through those fresh reforms.