Acres of newsprint and hours of media time have been taken in discussing Alistair Darling’s revelations on the Jeff Randall show on Monday.  The BBC’s political editor, for example, suggested that the Chancellor was demob happy.  Whatever the results of the General Election he thought Alistair Darling’s time at the Treasury was now limited.

I think there is a much more plausible explanation.  When the Prime Minister last shuffled his Cabinet he was intent on putting Ed Balls into the Treasury. 

But that re-shuffle was done at a point of weakness for the Prime Minister.  Ministers were resigning and, if the media reports are to be believed, Alistair Darling insisted that he stay at the Treasury – or he too would quit the Government.

What surprised me was how ‘easily’ he rolled over with respect to the content of his Pre Budget Report, towards the end of last year. 

How we deal with our mega debt issue is now the prism through which all political issues must be viewed.

The titanic struggle between the Prime Minister and Chancellor resulted in the Prime Minister greatly moderating the serious message on cuts. Some of their details should have been published in the Pre Budget Report. 

Now wind fast forward to last Monday.  My guess is the Prime Minister is again doing his heavy treatment on the Chancellor trying to ensure a pre election Budget.

The Chancellor, above all people, is strategically placed to know that if such a dish were to be served up to the bond markets there could be a sterling crisis and a failure to sell an ever-increasing number of tranches of government debt. 

So, unlike the BBC political editor, I don’t for one moment think the Chancellor is demob happy.  I think he has recovered the steeliness he showed at the last reshuffle.  My guess is there will be increasing tension between Nos. 10 and 11 Downing Street right up to the presentation of the Budget itself – and then beyond.

It is very difficult to get space for the counter argument to the meddling of neo Keynesian views about the economy.  Last Friday the FT carried two letters with a huge appendage of signatures making what is now thought to be the Keynesian line, on the dangers of cutting back before the recovery gets underway.

I have been trying to argue that this is a false dichotomy.  The issue is whether people will go on lending us money now that the Government has halted printing funny money to buy its own debt, and has a clear limit on how much of any gilts issue it can force the banks to buy.

While the FT has carried in the past 12 months one letter of mine it has refused an article and, similarly, decided not to print my reply to Friday’s onslaught. 

Here is the letter and people can judge for themselves.  It is a theme I have been trying to introduce to the public debate since shortly after the pre Budget report in November 2008.

One development since I wrote this letter is that the Governor of the Bank of England, before the Treasury Select Committee today, has given the broadest hint possible that the government will start printing more funny money to buy its own debt.  The Governor presumably believes there are not the buyers out there in the absence of a clear cuts programme from either Labour or the Conservatives.  Sterling fell as a result of the Governor’s statement.  How long will it be before there is a full scale sterling crisis and possibly a gilt strike?

Yesterday in the Commons we debated potential reform of the voting system.  The Tories charged the Government with conducting a cynical exercise to try to win votes at the pending election.  But nevertheless the issue of reforming how Britain votes is crucial.  

I have written before on the twin principles of representative and responsible government underpinning our democracy. Making our voting system fairer – in the sense of making each vote more equal, wherever it is cast in the UK – can impinge on holding governments responsible for their actions. 

In a typically well crafted and intelligent speech the Liberal Democrat spokesman, David Howarth, pooh-poohed the idea of the mandate.  That may be partly because he is a member of a minority party.  

As the election campaign gets underway properly, and particularly when the party leaders are quizzed together on television, what is in the manifesto, and whether the ideas stack up, will be increasingly important.  Look at how the Tories have got into a mess over their cuts programme which will be an important part of their mandate.  

In the past the idea of representative government has held together with responsible government, i.e. a government being accountable for its actions, because our electoral system usually delivers a party with a clear majority in the House of Commons that is in charge of its programme.  Nobody in yesterday’s debate considered how making votes more equal, and with it the possible rise of a multi-party government, might begin to knock away and undermine the idea of responsible government as we now know it.  

That is why I made a plea that yesterday’s efforts should be considered the opening stages of a debate which ought to occupy parliament at regular intervals over the next five years.  

There were two outstanding speeches yesterday. Roger Godsiff made the most powerful case for change.  It certainly set me thinking on whether I could continue to hold the position I put forward. 

The most fiery contribution was from George Galloway who is the outstanding orator in the House.  George didn’t consider how radically changing the voting system might make it even more difficult for voters to hold the government to account.  But he made it impossible to defend the status quo.