Even the drunken youth who urinated on the war memorial and the couple who used their baby’s buggy to steal Poppy Appeal tins haven’t been able to prevent Gordon Brown from topping the Remembrance week villains’ league table.

A misspelt name, a forgotten bow and being seen to preside ultimately over the Ministry of Defence bonus scheme has left the Prime Minister maybe not an anti-Christ but certainly an anti-Dame Vera Lynn.

The MoD bonuses are surely the most difficult action to defend. At a time when our teenage gangs appear to be better armed and equipped than our soldiers, it really isn’t good enough to be saying that bonuses and equipment money come from two different pots. As the latter pot seems far from overflowing, the correct action was, surely, to pour the former pot into it. The MoD should work like a football team: you only get your bonus after you’ve won.

Apart from the obvious pain and frustration these revelations have caused our soldiers’ loved ones, I find this scandal particularly annoying because I fear that “greedy” MoD civil servants might be used to provide a human shield for much, much greedier bankers. I can just hear those bankers saying: “Get off our backs about bonuses now. If it’s OK for the civil servants at the MoD . . .” Well it isn’t OK. We’re talking vastly different sums of money, and I don’t see why the people who, indirectly or otherwise, brought about the credit crunch should be allowed to wriggle off the hook.

In last week’s Sunday Times, the boss of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, said that his bank was doing “God’s work”. I’m sure this line was ironic but, coming from a fabulously highly paid banker amid the rubble of the credit crunch, it did feel like the rapist winking at his victim from the dock after his highly paid legal team has got him off scot free.

Bankers are back, as brazen and unapologetic as ever. They wedged a filing cabinet against the office door when the storm was raging. They leant back, feet on desk, and said: “Don’t panic. The public have got short memories. Show them the slightest hint of recovery and most of them will forget their moral indignation and we can start where we left off — making the biggest splashes we can and not worrying about the ripples.”

Now, as the green shoots glisten, it’s cigars-in-the-wine-bar time again. It looks suspiciously like the bankers have got away with it and, without a hint of remorse or reformation, are happily returning to business as usual.

It’s not like that in the House of Commons. Another of this year’s great scandals, MPs’ expenses, has had a very different outcome. Politicians, in the main, have simply admitted they did wrong and shown due contrition. The MPs have held up their hands, whereas the bankers have limited it to just one middle finger. Take Jacqui Smith — she apologised in the House and has admitted that she is “disgraced”, very different from Sir Fred Goodwin scampering off abroad with a gleeful “too late, suckers,” look over his shoulder.

Of course, it might be that the MPs aren’t really any more repentant than the bankers but democracy — the fact that we can vote them in or out — does offer a helpful incentive to don the sackcloth and ashes. The MPs may even have somewhat over-ashed. It’s possible that the Kelly report has gone too far and we’ll look back on measures like the ban on employing family members as a case of throwing out the baby with Jacqui Smith’s bathplug.

We’re unlikely to look back on the post-credit crunch regulation of bankers as having been too severe because there hasn’t been any. Well, not much. All the attempts at preventing a return to massive bonuses — three-year delays, payment in shares, transaction tax, G20 capping — have been ignored, savaged or watered down. Barclays, having announced a fat profit this week, said that it will take into account public concern about the size of bankers’ bonuses. As a result of this sensitivity, their investment bankers look set to receive bonuses of only £200,000 each this year. It’s going to be a cold, hard winter.

Prince Andrew, speaking as the UK’s special representative for trade and investment, said recently: “I don’t want to demonise the banking and financial sector.” Well, I do. If senior bankers were subjected to a public vote like MPs I suspect bonuses would be down considerably this year.

This is the problem with democracy. It’s like The X Factor: one can give people the vote but true power will always remain with the unelected rich. I’m sick of hearing about the sanctity of the free market when all that freedom seems to ensure is that boom leads to big bonuses for the bankers and bust leads to big debts for the people.

Nevertheless, it may sound contrary but the MPs’ expenses scandal has actually restored my faith in politics rather than destroyed it. When it came down to it, those at fault really were accountable to us. They bared their backs, took their public lashes and time will tell if they’ve been forgiven. The credit crunch has completely destroyed my faith in our financial institutions because it’s shown them to be essentially a law unto themselves.

As for the MoD, which of these two routes will they take: “we made a mistake” public penance or “we earned it” insensitive indignation?

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