No, no, a thousand times, no!

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So Ed Miliband is in all sorts of a mess as a couple or three trade unions kick him and his party about, demanding policy changes, fixing candidate selections and generally behaving like the people who own and control the Labour Party.

The right response is to, as the saying goes, 'grow a pair' and deal with the problem. Instead, Miliband wants you and me - taxpayers - to pay the Labour Party's bills:

Any plans for state funding have not been drawn up, but could be modelled on a blueprint by the independent Committee on Standards on Public Life, which proposed parties be recompensed for a donations cap with £23m a year of public money. 

So some youngster on low wages, just starting out in life is expected to contribute to the funding of political parties - involuntarily? Put simply this is disgusting - because political parties have given up recruiting members and organising across the country (in favour of swanky London offices, shiny-suited Oxbridge graduates and endless, shallow spin-doctoring) doesn't justify simply dipping into the tax pot.

If you want to get the "big money out of politics" then what you do is agree a donation cap. And that's it. You don't need to compensate parties, you don't need complicated, corrupting formulae and you don't need to spend other people's money on PR executives and wet behind the ears policy wonks who have never held down a real job.

We don't pay taxes to fund politics.

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