The row between Douglas Carswell and UKIP officials over the Short Money which the party is entitled to is clearly very damaging for UKIP. However despite this damage, it reveals a much bigger problem with our Political system. As I understand it, Short Money is public subsidy for Political Parties that are not in Government, to compensate them for the public funds used to fund the work of Cabinet Ministers within the Government. Douglas Carswell is right to turn down the money and UKIP are missing a tactical opportunity to point out how much of our money has been spent on the running of opposition parties over decades. The only problem for UKIP is that if they were to take the moral high ground over Short Money, their own behaviour with European Money as recently demonstrated by my own MEP, Janice Atkinson when she was a UKIP member will also come under scrutiny again and go far beyond an expensive pub lunch.

I totally support Douglas Carswell on this and believe now would be a good moment for him to raise it as an example of the way in which our Parliament uses the £2Bn of our money each year. However I hope his appetite for such a battle will carry him to also examine the accounts of the Party he has recently joined.