I continue to be amazed that Labour’s own internal financial problems haven’t been a bigger issue.

The issue is one that goes to the heart of their integrity, competence and fitness to Govern.

A pet theory of mine, as yet untested, is that the way parties run themselves internally is probably one of the best indicators we have about what a Government run by that party will be like. I base this on the idea that parties can run their parties however they like so, in effect, it exposes how they view authority, organisation, hierarchy, democracy etc. In addition we can see how they manage their communications, how they manage their own internal processes in drawing up policies, making announcements and finally – and crucially – we can see how they run their finances.

Is it reasonable to believe that an undemocratic, highly centralised, tightly disciplined party with strict processes and chains of command and rules about what people can and can’t say to whom would somehow then produce a decentralised, open, democratic government that values civil liberties? The very idea seems absurd, and in practice – in reality – Labour’s approach to Government appears to mirror their approach to their own internal organisation.

More relevant and important – can you believe that a party with a well documented “spend now, worry later – nothing must get in the way of winning” reckless, scorched earth attitude to funding election campaigns, landing them in serious debt would run the public finances with prudence, care and diligence?

Time has told on this one – Labour have run the public finances with the same ‘whatever it takes to win’ attitude, and has left our public finances mirroring their own.

The Times today runs a story that alleges Ray Collins, Labour’s General Secretary, has attempted to seize assets held by local branches of Labour – not to repay the debts they have, but to be able to borrow more against them. A very ‘Labour’ solution to the problem of impending financial (and electoral) doom. The NEC have stopped this – they fear that if they begin securing more borrowing against all the assets Labour has, they stand to lose absolutely everything.

It is desperate, humiliating stuff.

Well, Quantitative Easing is back, the terrifying new euphemism for ‘printing money’, which is itself a euphemism for stealing.

“Quantitative Easing” suggests that it’s ‘easing’ the pressure on the ‘quantity’ of money. This is not what is actually happening. Things wot Quantitative Easing doesn’t do:

1) It doesn’t pump money into the economy

2) It doesn’t create wealth from thin air

“But wait,” you cry. “The BBC says it’s pumping money into the economy! Why the hell would I trust you over the BBC?”

It’s a very sensible question to ask, but I contend that the BBC is dead wrong on this.

When money is printed it doesn’t create new money. It devalues all the rest of the money in the economy. In other words, the difference between the Government raising £200,000,000,000 by knocking on our doors and taking, on average, £6,666 from each adult of working age on one hand, and printing £200,000,000,000 on the other is that you don’t realise you’ve been robbed with the latter.

You’ve have been robbed. We all have. You just haven’t noticed yet.

By ‘pump money into the economy’ they really mean they’re pumping even more of our money into the banks. This money of ours, taken out of our hands by a simple key-press on a computer, is being used to convert bank’s investments into cash, leaving us, the taxpayer, holding the nightmare ‘assets’ that caused the credit crunch in the first place.

It’s hard to imagine any situation in which the taxpayer could possibly have been more screwed than they have been.

Yet all this Quantitative Easing doesn’t grow the economy at all. Not one bit. All that’s happened is that wealth has been redistributed from everyone to the banks. The total amount of wealth is exactly the same as it was before, but the value of a pound has gone down. We’re all, relative to the rest of the world, a third poorer than we were at the start of the credit crunch.

The theory is that by dumping massive volumes of cash on the banks they will start lending to us again, and thus get the economy going – specifically the hope is that banks with money can generate wealth simply by lending money. That’s the gamble.

So far it doesn’t appear to have had any effect. They have no clue, in fact, what it’s doing or what it’s likely to do. It may – just may – be keeping us in inflation as opposed to deflation. Yet despite this uncertainty they’re still confiscating another £25,000,000,000 in wealth from the economy to redistribute to the banks.

Good thing it’s bonfire night. I need to blow stuff up.

Reinventing the Tories seemed so simple: New Tories are racism free, they’re cool with homosexuality and they love the Public Services. Everything you need to win over those squishy swing voters, it seems.

Well, sort of. There’s something else they need to do, too.  Something that distances themselves from the sins of the past: First they need to keep quiet about Immigration. Second they need to keep quiet about Europe.

Europe is the Tory curse, it seems. Even if it’s not causing them to fight amongst themselves (like Dan Hannan standing down from the front bench to pursue the Lib Dem policy of an In or Out referendum), it’s still forcing them to talk about it.

When they talk about it they upset the anti-EU types because they don’t go far enough. They upset everyone else by simply being seen to be interested in a subject that people don’t consider important.

In my opinion Europe remains toxic for Cameron. The EU is still the top political story (what with a French Minister becoming highly emotional about a potential loss of British influence in the EU) and, for me, it feels like the first serious crack in the Tory machine.

But worse than bringing up Europe (although in fairness the other two parties are keeping schtum and letting the Tories flounder around on their own here) is the constant, constant “when” rather than “if” on the subject of the Tory Government.

Hague was doing it on Radio 5 live last night (while talking about Europe at the same time), and it made for repellent listening.

Get it sorted: If Brown gets another term, I’m blaming you.

A classic interchange paraphrased:

Nick Clegg: “Here’s this bad thing that’s happening. What are you going to do about it?”

Brown: “There’s a bad thing happening. I think it’s bad.”

Nick Clegg: “Er, no, what *exactly* are you going to do?”

Brown: “Here’s something not quite related to what you’re talking about that I once said”

Brown gets paid money for this. Actual hard cash.

Christopher Kelly, I could kiss you.

He’s recommended the end of the Communications Allowance – a £10k a year grant allowing MPs to have glossy leaflets delivered to their constituents explaining just how completely awesome they are. Needless to say, I was not amused.

Ending this travesty – MPs helping themselves to our money to send us spam to promote themselves – is very welcome. One less bit of Junk Mail, too.

Today might actually be a good day.