IT was when I started talking to myself every time it came on the news that I knew I had to do something. Well, not so much talking, more shouting at the screen.

Call it anger, a sense of injustice, the feeling that up and down the country people just like me were also yelling “Why doesn’t somebody do something?” that made me write to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police asking him to begin a criminal investigation into MPs’ expenses claims.

Believe me, there was no other motive. I don’t need distractions from my job in Middlesbrough.

I don’t like getting involved in things like this and I shouldn’t have to either.

It is now very likely that an investigation will take place. Politicians currently being called to account by the court of public opinion may also have to answer to a judge and jury. The Speaker, Michael Martin, a man who reportedly said he didn’t come into politics not to take what was owed to him, has gone, though whether he has the brass neck to take a peerage with his pension is yet to be seen. New rules seem to be based on reality rather than a fantasy world where food, furniture and “flipping” can all be charged to the taxpayer.

It would be easy to think that public opinion, with its sense of decency and dislike of greed and double standards, has won and the job is done. Easy – and wrong.

In the past few weeks we have been treated to the unusual sight of the British political establishment being taken out of its comfort zone. That zone is a cosy little place that has thrived for decades on a culture of official secrecy and public apathy. They must never return there.

To see how much they want a return ticket, you only had to look at Gordon Brown the other night.

He just doesn’t get it. On the one hand he was talking about all these new rules and on the other he was defending a Cabinet colleague who he said he was sure had not broken the law. It didn’t occur to him that it wasn’t for him to say. It is a matter for the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and, ultimately, that judge and jury to determine whether a crime has been committed, not any politician. If this scandal was about anything, it was about bad judgement. Mr Brown’s must be called into question.

Actually, I don’t think the scandal will go away for a long time. People are angrier about this than they were about government dishonesty over the war in Iraq, angrier than they were at the incompetence and greed that caused the current financial meltdown.

They will express that outrage as soon as they get the chance at the ballot box.

I believe that after that election as many as 30 per cent of the current MPs will have gone.

My only hope is that the honest politicians, the ones who haven’t cheated or exploited the rules, don’t become casualties because it is important that we focus our anger on the wrongdoers and turn our indignation into something constructive by creating systems that give citizens meaningful and sustained influence over the conduct of MPs; systems that give us the right to scrutinise them and call them to direct account.

All MPs must be reminded constantly that they are the servants of the public. They don’t have a job without our agreement. We, like all good employers, must be constantly striving to improve their performance.

They have to change, but so do we. Allowing our institutions of government to become objects of derision is bad for society, bad for us all. It must not happen again.