The Cabinet selling advertising space has great revenue-raising potential

Is this another palpable slide towards political debasement? Or plain good sense?

At first glance, it all seems rather desperate. The poor old Conservatives Party is so strapped for cash that it has been reduced to using the up-coming annual conference to sell advertising space in, for example, David Cameron’s bedroom. Another palpable slide towards political debasement, one might think.

Studied more closely, however – and with due consideration for the yawning hole in the nation’s finances – and the notion starts to look like plain good sense.

Better still, there are money-making opportunities everywhere. The most obvious are in 10 Downing Street, of course. A banner advert on the Prime Minister’s fridge, or on the collar of Larry (Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office), must be worth a few bob, surely?

Then again, the prospects a whit further from the absolute centre of power are hardly less rich. Indeed, from Michael Gove’s glasses case to Nick Clegg’s empty portfolio to Eric Pickles’s lunch-box, it is clear that the revenue-raising potential of the Cabinet has, thus far, gone woefully unexploited. It is time for the Chancellor to look up from his spreadsheets (sponsored by Sabatier) and start thinking creatively.