Chuka has launched his own 50-page “progressive manifesto” today, setting out his vision for the future of the country. Chuka insists that he is only putting them forward in his “personal capacity” and not as leader spokesman of the TIGgers…

There’s plenty of cuddly centrist ideas like a specific NHS-tax and nationalising “public benefit companies” without embracing full-on renationalisation, which Chuka says would be a “waste of money”. What will Anna Soubry think of his more lefty policies like hiking taxes on shareholders?

Guido is not sure the hordes of europhile youths will be quite so keen on Chuka when they see what he has to say about tuition fees. Chuka rejects the “simplistic policy of scrapping all fees” as “wasting money”. Self-obsessed millennials probably won’t like the sound of his “Citizens’ Service” either…

There’s also lots of talk about overhauling “parliament’s culture and ways of working”, and Chuka confirms that he still wants to ban PMQs after his Twitter rants over the past few weeks. Would he really be saying that if he was currently leader of the Labour Party…?

Chuka also wants to abolish the physical House of Commons and replace it with one of the dire “horseshoe” shaped Parliaments they have in the EU. Unsurprisingly he also wants votes at 16 and the adoption of a form of proportional representation. It’ll only be a small step from there to the endless turgid coalition politics of the continent where everything is stitched up in backroom deals and voters are even more disconnected from the political class…

Even more problematic is Chuka’s proposal for state funding for political parties. How is this ever going to be divided up? Do parties get more funding if they’re larger, thus cementing their dominance. Or do buckets of taxpayers’ cash get handed over to fringe parties to give the likes of Gerard Batten’s UKIP the chance to bring far right views further into the mainstream? Whatever the issues with funding in politics, getting the state to decide how to hand it out is the worst possible solution…