Like the snow, the expenses charges keep falling, covering the House of Commons in a blanket of scandal. Nobody hears what the politicians say because their voices are muffled by the allegations that are piling up, creating ever-deeper drifts outside the door.

The flakes float down indiscriminately, with three Labour MPs and a Tory peer facing charges under the Theft Act. David Cameron, Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg throw snowballs at each other, trying to spread the blame. But the voters look at them in dismay and think: “None of you is whiter than white.” All the parties are in the electoral deep freeze as Westminster endures its coldest, longest winter.

It’s not just about duck houses, moats and bath plugs. This is political climate change. There’s a growing disconnection between Parliament and the people that it is supposed to represent. As the election nears, party leaders shout louder but find it harder to get heard. They speak the language of change, but seem unable to face what that means. It looks more like reluctant tactics than true repentance.

Mr Cameron made a speech yesterday on “rebuilding trust in politics”. He promised to introduce a parliamentary privilege Act to ensure that MPs who fiddle their expenses go to jail. Like Barack Obama, he pledged to introduce tougher rules on lobbyists and ban ministers from taking jobs with them for at least two years after standing down. He was, he said, part of “a new generation come of age in the modern world of openness and accountability”.

But last June his party voted against a government proposal to clarify the rules on parliamentary privilege. The Tories are currently operating a revolving-door policy in reverse, with 28 prospective parliamentary candidates in winnable seats working as lobbyists or PR consultants. And can Mr Cameron really claim to be spearheading a new era of transparency when his own election campaign is being funded by a man who refuses to say whether he pays tax in this country?

The Tory leader has long talked of his desire to change the culture in the Commons. “I’m fed up with the Punch and Judy politics of Westminster, the name calling, backbiting, point scoring, finger pointing,” he said in his first speech as leader. But yesterday he spat out a litany of insults about Mr Brown. “The character of his Government — secretive, power-hoarding, controlling — is his character,” he said. If Punch and Judy are simply replaced by Tom and Jerry, is that really a “new politics”? The electorate might prefer a bit of Charlie and Lola’s humour and humanity.

The Prime Minister looks increasingly opportunistic too. Today he will ask MPs to vote for a referendum on changing the voting system. He is now, he says, a supporter of the alternative vote, under which candidates are placed in order of preference. If Mr Brown had really wanted to introduce electoral reform, he should have backed it in 1998, when Lord Jenkins of Hillhead recommended a new system, or he should have proposed a change in 2007, when he became Prime Minister, rather than three months before an election. His “deathbed conversion” to AV, as Mr Clegg puts it, has everything to do with politics and nothing to do with passion. Mr Brown is trying to suck up to the Liberal Democrats, who would hold the balance of power in a hung Parliament, and he is trying create a “dividing line” with the Conservatives, who are committed to keeping the first-past-the-post system. It is an utterly cynical move that will only reinforce the impression that politicians are more interested in themselves than the voters.

Like Mr Cameron, Mr Brown began his time as leader promising a “new type of politics”. He said that he would seek “consensus and not division” and look for “long-term solutions” rather than “short-term slogans”. Constitutional change would, he said, be central to restoring trust in politics and politicians. There have been some reforms since then. But many of the most radical proposals — such as ending the dual role of the Attorney-General as legal adviser and politician — have been watered down after months of dithering by the Prime Minister.

Mr Brown has still not implemented proposals from the Wright committee, which he set up last June, that would give Parliament more power over the executive. Indeed, the Government has not even found time for the recommendations — which include allowing MPs to elect select committee chairmen and help to decide Commons business, as well as allowing voters to set issues through e-petitions — to be debated. They will be discussed for the first time in the chamber later this month, but the whips have ensured that they will be subject to a parliamentary procedure which means that they can be blocked by a single backbencher shouting “object”. The Government could then cherrypick the proposals it favours.

Mr Brown finds it easier to talk a radical game than to play one. The dividing lines returned long ago. And when it comes to care of the elderly at least, the Prime Minister seems to prefer “short-term slogans” to “long- term solutions”. He has put forward a plan to give the frailest pensioners entirely free care, regardless of their wealth — which may appeal to some voters but ignores a proposal in the Government’s own Green Paper for an insurance scheme, which would be both fairer and more affordable.

According to Lord Lipsey, a Labour peer who sat on the Royal Commission on Long-Term Care for the Elderly, Mr Brown’s policy is a “gimmick” that ignores a serious social and financial problem.

With the country preparing to go to the polls in weeks, it is perhaps inevitable that short-term tactics will take precedence over longer-term considerations. But now more than ever politicians need to raise their eyes and their aspirations. The entire political class is in danger of being frozen out by the voters for years to come. There is far more at stake than one general election.

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