Nigel Farage has said Maria Miller's resignation is not enough, arguing voters should be given the chance to sack the former culture minister as their local MP.
The voters of Basingstoke ought to be given the opportunity to oust her in a by-election, the Ukip leader argued, saying her apology showed “a lack of comprehension”.
In an interview with The Basingstoke Gazette he said: “The apology was derisory and it shows a lack of comprehension of how people think about this. The miracle is not that she resigned, the miracle is that David Cameron didn’t sack her a week ago and that shows appalling misjudgement.
Speaking in Miller’s own constituency, Farage said part of the 2010 coalition agreement promised voters the right to recall, which would allow constituents to hold MPs to account by being able vote for their dismissal.
The right of recall committed the government to introducing a new power allowing voters to force a by-election when an MP was found to have engaged in serious wrongdoing. But no such measure has been delivered.
Now, Farage has argued, Cameron and Clegg "appear likely only to pursue a watered-down measure that will allow a committee of MPs to decide if a case is serious enough to allow voters that right."
Farage said: “Yet again this is the political class looking after its own and letting down the electorate.
“A promise was made by Cameron and Clegg and they have failed to honour it. That is desperately cynical as I suspect they never intended to honour it in the first place," he wrote in a post online.
"Voters in Basingstoke and elsewhere will be forgiven for thinking the whole political class at Westminster is once again conspiring to protect one of its own from proper democratic accountability.”
The prime minister's handling of the expense scandal shows "how disconnected he is with public opinion", the Ukip leader said.
Farage told the BBC that Cameron acted as if "there wasn't anything wrong" with Miller's actions.