By the time the election gave us the opportunity to pass judgement, politics had been reduced in public esteem to its nadir – estate agents and journalists were looking downright saintly. MPs were radioactive, poisoning all around them: candidates who had never served in the Commons found themselves having to answer for the behaviour of those they were trying to replace. Mr Cameron's campaign struggled to escape the taint that smeared them all. The very idea of politics as a worthy pursuit, let alone a necessary one, was dead. H L Mencken's phrase about the willingness of professional politicians to humiliate themselves making them no better than streetwalkers still applied.  Then came the clear-out. On May 6, of the 650 MPs elected, 233 were new. This generational purge brought new talent, fresh attitudes and a dose of humility to an institution in dire need of renewal. Since then, Parliament and politics have been gradually working their way back towards acceptability. Talk of green shoots may be premature, but there is a new tone to our political discourse which deserves recognition and encouragement. Is it time we started acknowledging the value of politics and politicians?  To say so is to invite snorts of derision. The letters pages of The Daily Telegraph still resonate with the disappointment we feel at the way we are governed. The trials of those former MPs accused of criminal fraud are about to get under way and the issues raised remind us yet again of how we were failed by those we elected. There is so much to deplore and precious little to celebrate.  But consider the small signs this week of a return to a more straightforward and honest politics. On Tuesday, Vince Cable presented Lord Browne of Madingley's proposals for reforming university tuition fees to Parliament. It was a politically awkward moment for the Business Secretary, who had to explain why, having campaigned to keep tuition fees as they are, he now proposes to let them rise with little or no limit. The Labour benches forgot that five years ago they voted for just such a measure and howled their contempt. "We are not in an ideal world," he replied. "We have faced up to reality."  There was something impressive about his defiance. Having publicly staked out one position in the summer – in favour of a graduate tax – he found himself, a few months later, championing a reform that went the other way, based on markets and putting students in control. Where he could have trimmed or postured, he opted for principle. The political battle is still to be had but I wonder if we will look back at his statement as a refreshing moment of integrity in politics.  Think back also to Monday and how David Cameron reacted to the discovery that the Scots aid worker Linda Norgrove was not killed by her captors, as initially reported on Saturday, but possibly by the actions of her American rescuers. This was the Prime Minister's first experience of the terrible burden of responsibility that comes with the office. From 4am on Monday, when Gen David Petraeus, the commander in Afghanistan, telephoned Downing Street to reveal that Miss Norgrove may have been killed by an American grenade, Mr Cameron acted speedily to reveal the tragic turn of events.  The announcement was postponed only by his insistence that he contact her parents first at their remote croft on the Isle of Lewis. The directness with which he admitted the mistake won him praise from Angus MacNeil, the Nationalist MP for the Hebrides, who is normally first in line to attack the Tories.  Look at the wider canvas and you see a Coalition whose ministers talk openly of their readiness to lose the next election, should that be the result of securing reforms to education, health, welfare, the workings of Whitehall and the public finances that more timid governments might shy away from. In both Liverpool and Birmingham, at the conferences of the two partner parties, I was struck again and again by a steeliness among their politicians about the task in hand, and the importance of delivering the change the country voted for five months ago.  The same can be said for the new intake of MPs from all sides who, while not losing their appetite for party battles, start their first autumn session as parliamentarians clear in the knowledge that the only masters now are the voters who sent them to Westminster. They are anxious to show that the kind of politics they represent – modest, diligent, honest, above all effective – has value and should be a celebrated part of the British model of parliamentary democracy. They have acquired, in T S Eliot's phrase, "the wisdom of humility".  No wonder then that they, along with the MPs who survived the May cull, are frustrated by the obstacles placed in their way by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. The watchdog was designed to oversee a more efficient and less costly expenses regime but it still struggles to make things work; the complaints keep coming. Sometimes the stories are comical, like the description of MPs who nearly missed a vote this week because they had to queue, Soviet-style, for their IPSA dinner receipt vouchers if they wanted a meal at work.  Yes, the moans from old-timers elicit little sympathy. But the descriptions by new MPs of how they have cashed their ISAs to fund office costs, extended their overdrafts and given up trying to claim travel expenses show just how close we are to institutionalising new ways of preventing politics from working as it should. MPs should not profit from the system, but nor should they be left at a disadvantage.  Mr Cameron told the Telegraph three weeks ago that IPSA was not working and he was "keeping an eye on it", with a view to scrapping it and starting again. This is the irony of British politics as we prepare for next week and the moment when the Coalition gives us the honesty we demand. Just as we are finally seeing the emergence of better politics, our better politicians are hampered by a system that would have been right then but is wrong now.
They are anxious to be modest, diligent, honest and effective &ndash; so can we    learn to trust our MPs again, asks Benedict Brogan.