Tory Party chairman Grant Shapps agrees with David Cameron that a line should be drawn under the Maria Miller expenses affair.

In the immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davies, “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?”

Shapps, the man who believes that the sure way to working-class hearts, or at least votes, is to knock a penny off a pint of beer and reduce taxes on bingo, must know that he is barking up the wrong tree.

Voters saw the contemptuous treatment of Standards Commissioner Kathryn Hudson expressed in Miller’s half-minute “apology,” cocooned by a swarm of Tory frontbenchers, and they didn’t like it.

When four in five voters think you should be sacked from your Cabinet job and two-thirds believe you should be booted out of Parliament, it must dawn on you that you’ve dropped a proverbial.

Miller is quite prepared to brazen it out, just as she did with her cruel consignment of thousands of disabled Remploy workers to the dole and her scrapping of Independent Living Fund grants.

However, it’s one thing to put the boot into the poor and vulnerable. The capitalist media were right behind her on that.

It’s totally different to threaten that same media, as her bag carrier Jo Hindley did, warning a Telegraph reporter against digging into the Miller expenses story because the Culture Secretary would be meeting her editor to discuss the Leveson inquiry into media ethics.

It’s an indication of the desperation of Miller’s position that prize dimwit Iain Duncan Smith was wheeled out to suggest that she was being victimised for her role in piloting equal marriage legislation through Parliament.

If that’s the best case that the defenders of wealth and arrogance can furnish, then the Miller’s tale is all but told.

Her parliamentary career should be dead and buried, but there should be room in the tomb for the MP-dominated standards committee, which has again disgraced itself by diluting the Standards Commissioner’s report.

MPs on the committee have reprised the shameful role they played when Elizabeth Filkin was standards commissioner and she made the mistake of taking investigation of top new Labourites and Tories seriously.

Allowing MPs to sit in judgement on those appointed to examine their conduct hasn’t worked.

Their collective arrogance and self-regard conspire to exonerate behaviour viewed as criminal in other walks of life.

The old boys’ network safety net must be removed and genuinely rigorous oversight of their financial claims imposed.

How many times does this government have to fill the pockets of its City backers in dodgy privatisations before ministers are brought to book?

Rail unions are fully justified in taking legal action to challenge plans by the Tory and Liberal Democrat conspirators to hand profitable franchises to rail privateers on the East Coast Mainline, Thameslink and Great Northern routes.

After the scandal of Royal Mail, it would be grotesque for the coalition to fast-track this concerted robbery of the public purse.

The private sector has already thrown the towel in twice on the East Coast Mainline, while the current publicly owned operator is making a success of running it.

Ed Miliband teases the electorate by suggesting that Labour will consider “innovative solutions” for the rail network.

For goodness sake, man, stand up to the new Labour “private is best” lobby for once and pledge to return the entire network to public ownership.