What a wizard wheeze!

How's this for a tasteful, wizard wheeze? Labour's pollsters urged Tony Blair to hold a khaki referendum in the wake of 11 September.

They told him that given his masterful handling of the crisis and the public enthusiasm for international solidarity he'd easily win a referendum on the euro.

Luckily all the ministers consulted thought it crass, insensitive ... and not on their grid.

I'm told the favourite date at the moment is 1 May 2003 after Gordon Brown gives the thumbs up this autumn.

I've had a radical thought about party political funding: make them spend less.

The row over the government's contacts with Enron has got the political classes talking again about state funding.

The argument is a pretty simple one. People don't like parties getting money from big business: it raises the obvious question "what do they get in return?"

But then they're not too keen on Labour getting money from the trade unions, for exactly the same "he who pays the piper" reasons.

Perhaps stricter housekeeping might spell the end for Demon Eyes, William Hague in a wig, and "Labour isn't working"

So, the argument goes, the only answer is a set amount of money from state. But er, people might think spending their hard-earned tax money on political campaigns a bit of a cheek.

So everyone throws up their hands and agrees we just have to live with buckets of sleaze allegations being thrown over political parties on a regular basis.

Well, as I say, it is a bit radical but what about political parties actually living within their means, spending only the money individual members will give them?

What would we lose? Any thoughts?

Perhaps stricter housekeeping might spell the end for Demon Eyes, William Hague in a wig, and "Labour isn't working".

I've always thought there was something rather New Labour about America's secretary of state Colin Powell

A couple of former special advisors tell me it's those posters that gobble up the party's cash.

Just as I'm musing on party funding, head down in the rain, I bump into the pair, one a former Labour spin doctor, the other a Conservative one.

They tell me that the poster sites religiously booked months before elections are hugely expensive and ultimately a waste of space.

By coincidence a senior member of the shadow cabinet has come to the same conclusion.

He feels their pre-election "you've paid the taxes ..where are the nurses" poster campaign was brilliantly conceived, politically spot on ... and didn't move public opinion a jot.

I've always thought there was something rather New Labour about America's secretary of state Colin Powell.

He's evidently now taken to 'phoning up his mates in the British Government to moan about the inanities of Bush and Rumsfeld.

"The trouble with those guys" he tells them "they've never smelt cordite".