If the economic crisis is global, politics remains defiantly local. The point is proved in the conflicting approaches among the world’s leaders in advance of and at the G20 summit – an emerging struggle, as Paul Mason wrote presciently in last week’s issue, between fiscal stimulators and re-regulators – and in the separate row over MPs’ expenses claims. Not surprisingly, individual countries had different priorities in advance of the London gathering with, to take just one example, the United States and the United Kingdom moving in one direction, France and Germany in another. But such a large group of leaders was never going to agree on all of Gordon Brown’s lofty ambitions for the G20, even if they face a common crisis.

Meanwhile, the latest revelations about Jacqui Smith’s expenses received almost as much coverage as the preparations for the summit. In recent days, asked questions about his Home Secretary and her husband’s choice of home movies, Mr Brown has turned to his aides after press conferences with international leaders and wondered why journalists cannot focus on the bigger picture. But the focus shifts from the big picture to the small when politics moves from the global to the local stage, and both, of course, can have significance.

By talking of a “global deal”, Mr Brown inflated expectations in advance of the G20. In doing so, he displayed a slackness of political judgement surprising in a leader once renowned for his strategic skills. But he should not be mocked for recognising that a global crisis demands a co-ordinated international response, and in seeing several months ago that this G20 was an opportunity for serious policymaking. He has correctly argued many times that economic recovery in Britain will begin earlier if countries act together.

Yet even if Mr Brown was a good communicator, which he is not, the message would struggle to get through. Voters make local judgements and seldom, if ever, global ones. In France, President Sarkozy has faced protests and riots against his leadership. In the US, President Obama may retain high popularity ratings, but his lustre has been tarnished as he grapples with the extremity of the recession, and his Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, has been eviscerated.

A global economic crisis of this severity cannot be addressed by a group of disparate leaders alone. The G20 has exposed the limits of collective action, but also shown the possibilities for achieving a more
co-ordinated response to the crisis as well as the need for more robust international institutions, from a stronger European Union to a reformed International Monetary Fund, in which China has increased influence.

However irritated Mr Brown may be by the febrile media concentration on MPs’ expenses, at a time when he is giving his virtually undivided attention to the economy, he must never forget that the business of politics remains stubbornly local. He should be wary, too, of how weary people are becoming of Westminster politics, of how tired they are of MPs’ hypocrisies and cant, and their reluctance ever to say quite what they mean. The picture emerging from Westminster is of a closed shop, of a club of members who routinely top up their £63,000 basic salaries with an average of £135,600 in expenses.

MPs are permitted to claim so much (including Jacqui Smith’s 88p bath plug) partly to compensate for their relatively low wages compared to their counterparts in other equivalent countries. There is also an obvious need for MPs who live outside London to have accommodation during the week at Westminster. Most voters appear to welcome the possibility of contact with a local MP in their constituency. In which case they must also accept that there will be some cost in sending them to London.

But the current arrangements have absurd anomalies, which make MPs seem greedy and out of touch during a bitter recession. It is obvious now that expenses must be limited to what is necessary and cannot extend to luxuries at John Lewis. Although Labour MPs are not alone in taking advantage of this “system”, it falls on Labour to put it right. As we said last week of the case of Tony McNulty: members may well be able to make extravagant claims yet still adhere to the rules, but that simply means the rules are wrong and in urgent need of reform. Gordon Brown must push foward sweeping changes to the rules before the whole of Westminster becomes contaminated by the stench of corruption.

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