As gamblegate stretches into its second week, it seems there is no end to the revelations about MPs misbehaving at the bookies. And naturally, as when any significant ethical misconduct is in the news, it didn’t take long for this one to be equated with the expenses scandal.

Partygate was trundling into its sixth month when we were asked: “will this prove as damaging as the expenses scandal?”. Even the little remembered – except by me – 2015 election expenses saga, in which parties were accused of going over campaign spending limits, at one point threatened to “become like expenses”.

A BBC documentary even had a go at suggesting the expenses scandal led to Brexit – though rather unsuccessfully – and caused me to (somewhat grumpily) argue in my book that if you squint hard enough you can make anything about Brexit these days.

The expenses scandal, for those requiring a quick refresher, broke in 2009. It was an extraordinary set of revelations, drip-fed to the public by the Daily Telegraph, on the many different ways members of parliament were interpreting their right to claim personal expenses from public funds. Some were downright illegal – such as claims on false invoices. Others were technically legal but ethically dubious, such as claims to recover the costs of cleaning moats and repairing helipads or buying biscuits and trouser-presses.

The reporting went on and on, and, as........

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