This is a minefield. I don't want to insult the intelligence of the wider public, upset the sonorous prophets of the Westminster village or outrage public morality by suggesting that integrity is divisible or disposable. But never mind: it has to be said, so here goes.

Face it, boys: when it comes to party-funding scandals, most voters don't care much. It doesn't ring our bell. Certainly the endless shouting of “sleaze!” does no good for the image of politics, and the current chaos makes new Labour look stupid for breaking its own rules. But deep down, do we care? In our heads we may, when we force ourselves into a posture of thoughtful political seriousness; but it does not touch our daily hearts. So — a rich weirdo secretly gave money to help a couple of Labour anoraks beat each other (not even the Tories) in a struggle to be the new John Prescott? So what?

Even the bigger funding scandals, like the Ecclestone affair, probably didn't swing Joe Voter much. Perhaps he likes a fag and a race himself, and ignores trackside ads anyway. Cash-for-questions and peerages came closer to the heart, but even so I doubt that either was a deal-breaker in the voting booth.

As for party funding in general, I suspect that the majority view could be summed up as: “No, the taxpayer should NOT fund their damn posters and battle buses. They should spend less, and rely on local membership and telling the truth in TV interviews. Yep, donations should be capped, probably at a tenner a head to make them a bit politer to their grass-roots. Why do you think that voter turnout has gone down over the decades that electoral advertising has gone mad, eh? Now go away, I'm busy.”

Q&A: secret donor scandal

Our Political Correspondent analyses the origins of the secret donor sleaze row and its potential implications

• Timeline: Labour's secret donor row

Multimedia

• Video: Brown under fire in Parliament

• Pictures: Labour funding row - key players

BACKGROUND

• A walking paradox who gave £600,000

• Brown is made to play the fool in stage farce

• Jack Dromey declares he is victim of concealment

The idea that voters have different priorities from Westminster-watchers is well understood by politicians themselves. Why else do you suppose that there was the sudden announcement yesterday of a new cancer plan, which the PM (not, note, his Health Secretary) proudly announced as a “road map to a higher standard of care available to all”? Expect more gung-ho announcements in the next week. Both parties know there is no future in saying: “OK, we couldn't manage our way out of a paper bag, but we are ever so careful about not allowing people to give us money without writing it down.” Sensible candidates put their faith in what we may call the Mussolini effect — as in “at least he made the trains run on time”. People care about daily life, their savings and the prudent spending of their taxes on services that work and are fair.

So what has been really, deeply damaging to the Government has been — and continues to be — the evidence of incompetence. It would be a pity if the Abrahams affair were to eclipse the far greater scandals: the inability to count immigrant numbers and released foreign criminals; the failure to plan for the impact of a massive foreign influx on schools, health services, and housing; the revelation that the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency blithely sold personal details to convicted criminals; and the dramatic incompetence of the Revenue & Customs in making 25 million people vulnerable to fraud by not having a properly respectful system for dealing with their financial details.

It now transpires that more CDs with personal details of 40,000 housing benefit claimants (ie, the poorest and most vulnerable) were lost in transit by the Department for Work and Pensions, and that as part of an “anti-fraud initiative” 6,500 public sector workers in Devon had their details lost en route to a private data company. Oh, and in writing letters of apology to the 25 million families in the original debacle, the Revenue & Customs sent numerous letters and useful national insurance numbers to out-of-date addresses.

That sort of thing matters. So do dirty hospitals, overcrowded schools that can't afford to teach new children English, poor transport, harsh new curriculum rules, inadequate and insensitive policing and unnecessary prodnose laws concerning what three-year-olds must know, how rude we may be to one another, how many weeks we must wait for a Criminal Records Bureau “disclosure” before we can hire a playgroup assistant we have known for 20 years, and how much information about Auntie's M&S shares we must divulge under Nolan rules before we sit on a parish council.

Those things matter, because they affect daily and family life. When a government does routine things competently and briskly and respectfully, keeps its nose out of what is not its business, insists that its ministers are appropriately knowledgeable, well briefed and stable and treats its Civil Service

with rigour and respect, voters notice and are pleased. Even tiny administrative victories count: the way you can now get a car tax disc online is a joy. But we also notice when the wheels fall off while government brags and poses and spins and pirouettes and loses our stuff and then chucks money at huge projects like the Olympics without remembering to count the VAT, or considering how much it will damage support for the arts and general recreation.

So David Cameron should be careful not to go on and on about party funding, his own lot being equally shaky in this regard. He should remember — as should the PM — that this is not what we care most about. I am not saying that rule-breaking is OK, or denying that Harriet Harman is a bit of an idiot; and certainly when corruption goes too far down the chain, as in Italy, it really does start mattering because you have to bribe and cajole public officials or give work to their brothers-in-law.

Which is a bore. But Oddball Abrahams? Forget it. Just keep the trains (and the taxmen) on the rails.

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