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David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband are united in urging the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) to think again over its recommendation that MP salaries should rise by 11 per cent.
Cameron warns Ipsa chairman Sir Ian Kennedy that, without reconsideration, the government cannot rule out taking action to undermine the committee decision.
Nothing new in this since successive governments have handed public-sector pay to committees of experts before invoking the need to counter inflation to impose lower settlements.
MPs do not enjoy universal sympathy, having nodded through pay freezes on civil servants, teachers, police, prison officers, local authority staff and other public-sector workers.
The continuing trend for workers' wages to take up a smaller segment of annual output can be expected to guarantee public hostility to the idea of boosting MP salaries from £66,000 to £74,000.
MPs have not helped their own cause through expenses scandals and the readiness of some to sell their parliamentary services to the highest bidder.
Most disgusting has been the willingness of all but an honourable few to parrot dishonest formulas that the only way out of crisis is through cutting working-class living standards.
That, stripped of verbiage, remains the position of all three main parliamentary parties.
To appear consistent in the "all in it together" charade proclaimed by government, the leaders place the Ipsa report alongside the ongoing assault on low-paid workers' real wages.
There is no equivalence. Even if MP salaries are held down to £66,000 a year, none will experience fuel poverty, be forced to use a food bank, be summonsed for non-payment of council tax or be evicted for inability to afford the bedroom tax.
That's not necessarily an argument for holding down MPs' salaries. There is a case to be made for higher remuneration.
Nor are the party leaders in a position to pontificate on MPs' pay, given their £11,000-£12,000 monthly pay packets and, as far as Clegg and Cameron are concerned, their wealthy family backgrounds.
The rich have always opposed decent pay for MPs so as to restrict parliamentary service to the financially independent.
One of the Chartists' main demands was that MPs should be paid, recognising that working people's representatives should be able to take part in political life without sliding into penury.
The problem now is that growing numbers of working-class people, whether employed or not, are facing impoverishment because of the austerity policies favoured by the parliamentary elite while the share of national wealth appropriated by the rich and powerful continues to grow.
Miliband tells us that he thinks it wrong that MPs should have a pay rise while workers face "a pay squeeze and facing incredibly difficult economic circumstances," but he fails to draw the obvious conclusion.
Workers in the public and private sectors should not be forced by the combined weight of parliamentary privilege, bolstered by the City and the capitalist media, to endure this economic hell.
TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady is correct to point out that declining real pay rates are resulting in worsening gender pay inequality.
This won't bother Cameron's coalition, but it should concern the Labour opposition.
It's not enough to point to working people's living standards falling without insisting on an end to pay restraint, increased wages and pensions and higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for them.
