On Friday the tumbrils rolled into Stone, waiting to collect the latest victim of the parliamentary expenses scandal. This quiet canalside town in Staffordshire is the centre of the constituency represented by Bill Cash, the veteran Eurosceptic Tory MP.

On Friday afternoon the locals were sitting outside its many cafes and bars enjoying the sunshine — but the political temperature was getting almost unbearably hot.

Cash had been exposed that morning for claiming £15,000 for staying at his daughter’s London flat despite owning outright another property that was nearer to Westminster. His constituents were disgusted.

“It’s terrible. They should all be taken to court,” said Roy Brocklehurst, a 66-year-old resident. “From what I can tell, Bill Cash seems to be doing good things for Stone so I was amazed when I heard about his expenses claims. He is just as bad as the others. I feel betrayed. He must go.”

Cash was not going quietly. “I had to have a flat in London to perform my duties. I did that,” he protested, adding that paying his daughter Laetitia — who is on the Tory A-list of favoured candidates for the next election — was, in that now familiar phrase, “within the rules”.

Yesterday he again demanded a fair hearing, but the past week has shown that the public is more in the mood for summary justice. To date, the political death toll from the expenses scandal stands at 13 MPs but, as those harbouring guilty secrets know only too well, it will not stop at that unlucky number.

First to go last week was Julie Kirkbride, the former Tory golden girl who once topped a Westminster league table of the sexiest MPs. Her husband Andrew MacKay, a fellow MP, had said the previous Saturday that he would not seek re-

election in Bracknell, after the couple were exposed as claiming expenses on two second homes. The Bromsgrove MP was now hit by a drip-feed of allegations.

She had paid her sister to act as a constituency secretary, despite the fact that she lived 125 miles away from Bromsgrove; she had spent more than £1,000 of taxpayers’ money on a series of publicity photographs; she had used her parliamentary allowance to pay for a home extension.

On their own none was fatal but by Thursday, and facing a chastening promised tour of her constituency, Kirkbride had had enough and announced that she, too, would stand down.

Within minutes Margaret Moran, the football scarf-wearing Labour backbencher, had also quit, forced out by constituents furious at her £22,500 expenses claim for treating dry rot at her husband’s home, less than 100 miles from both her Luton South constituency and Westminster. In an ugly symbol of the ferocity of public anger, a voter daubed her office door with the humiliating grafitti message “That’s life”.

By Friday night there was yet another casualty as Elliot Morley, the former Labour minister who claimed £16,000 on expenses for a mortgage that had already been paid off, threw in the towel, telling his Scunthorpe party he would not stand at the next election.

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