Cameron demands Tory Euro-transparency

There are some long faces in Brussels today. David Cameron is forcing his MEPs to declare their allowances and to subject their expenses to independent audit. Almost all Conservatives accept that it needs to happen, but that doesn't make them any happier about it. "No one would be paying any attention if it hadn't been for bloody Conway," say some. "You should see what the Germans get up to," say others. "You don't get any credit for disclosure," say still others. "You just invite more criticism."

All these objections are fair; yet all, ultimately, are irrelevant. It's true the sudden interest in Tory MEPs was an aftershock from l'affaire Conway: MEPs are anonymous and irrelevant, which is why they have been able to construct their extraordinary allowances system in the first place.

It's true, too, that the Brits are by no

means the worst offenders. And it's true - and bloody annoying - that many journalists, being lazy, fall on whatever information Conservative MEPs volunteer, while ignoring the fact that most Labour and Lib Dem Euro MPs are keeping completely schtum - and are presumably doing so for a reason.

Yet there is a much bigger reason to come clean, and it's this: the expenses regime, as it stands, is literally corrupting: it turns good people into bad people. As MEPs become habituated to the system, their values shift. Things that would have mortified them before their election stop seeming like scams at all. They start to talk about 'their' allowances, forgetting that everything comes from the taxpayer. After a while, they begin to excuse the EU's much larger acts of corruption, dismissing all critics as xenophobic blockheads.

Cameron's initiative won’t solve all these problems. It won’t extend to other British MEPs, let alone to other nationalities. But it's a start.