MPS should pack away their hairshirts and vote themselves a proper pay rise today, ignoring the inevitable bad headlines.

But, in return, MPs must find a way to trigger a Commons vote that would force Gordon Brown to also give police officers the pay rise they deserve.

With 114 Labour signatures on a Parliamentary motion condemning the staged police pay award as "petty and needless", that must be possible - if our MPs show courage.

Today, the thumbscrews will be put on MPs on all sides to vote down the 2.56 per cent rise recommended for them by the senior salaries review board.

Yes, that's right - 2.56 per cent. Not "generous", or "inflation-busting", or any of the other false adjectives applied, but well below RPI (four per cent), used for most pay settlements. Yet all the party leaders will demand their MPs exercise "discipline"

by voting themselves a 1.9 per cent rise.

Or, as it should be called, a pay cut.

Mr Brown needs MPs to get him out of the hole he has dug for himself by forcing the police to settle for 1.9 per cent, in defiance of an independent recommendation. The Prime Minister says this painful decision is necessary to keep inflation under control, but experts agree that is complete codswallop.

Public sector pay does not drive inflation. It is salaries in the private sector - affecting the price of everything from cars to hair cuts and potatoes - that can hit the inflation rate.

So, let's not be fooled when Mr Brown says: "Nobody would like to pay the police more than I do, but we must not take risks with inflation." What he means is: "Nobody would like to pay the police more than I do, but I've screwed up the nation's finances and it will be embarrassing if our budget deficit gets even bigger."

MPs, earning £60,675, are not particularly well paid. Here in London, that salary is laughed at by many in the private, and public, sectors. But, in standing up to No 10, MPs should also stand up for police officers, 18,500 of whom joined a protest march to Parliament yesterday.

(Incidentally, rumours that the Government had hired in a group of miners to beat them up proved unfounded.) Among the MPs protesting over the staged police pay award are David Anderson (Blaydon), Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed), Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley), David Clelland (Tyne Bridge), Frank Cook (Stockton North), John Cummings (Easington), David Curry (Skipton and Ripon), Bill Etherington (Sunderland North), John Greenway (Ryedale), Stephen Hepburn (Jarrow), Denis Murphy (Wansbeck), Dari Taylor (Stockton South) and Phil Willis (Harrogate and Knaresborough).

They should get their modest pay rise - and ensure the police are next in line.

WILLIAM Hague, below, normally charges a cool £15K for such witticisms - but MPs got this one for free.

The Shadow Foreign Secretary lit up the interminable EU Treaty debate by conjuring up the image of Tony Blair visiting Gordon Brown at No 10 - as president of Europe.

He imagined: "The gritted teeth and bitten nails, the Prime Minister emerges from his door with a smile of intolerable anguish, the choking sensation as the words Mr President' are forced from his mouth.

"And then, once in the Cabinet room, the melodrama of When will you hand over to me?' all over again." Even David Miliband was grinning.