In true socialist style the Labour spin machine went to work, calling Osborne’s comments irresponsible and unpatriotic. While Brown expressed “regret” at Osborne’s “partisan” approach, the PM’s supporters claimed the Shadow Chan­cellor had breached some unwritten convention that the Opposition never comments on the value of sterling.

For all its synthetic outrage, this assault on Osborne was crudely cynical. With its phoney appeals to British loyalty and constitutional precedent, its objective was to divert attention from the central truth of Osborne’s message: that Brown and his Govern­ment are destroying the British economy with their reckless policies. The Shadow Chan­cellor is right to say that there is a sterling crisis because investors have no faith in either our currency or our economy.

Labour is equally wrong to claim that there is a tradition by which Opposition parties have to maintain silence about sterling. Throughout recent history there have been vigorous debates about the pound, such as those that took place over our membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in the late Eighties.

Coming from a party which has shown utter contempt for Britain’s traditions and nationhood, the eagerness by Labour to don the mantle of constitutional patriotism could not have been more nauseating. No previous Government has shown such enthusiasm for dismantling our heritage.

After so badly weakening our national identity through their devotion to the twin forces of multi-culturalism and mass immigration, it is the height of hypocrisy for Labour Ministers to bleat now about loyalty to the national cause.

Labour’s autocratic impulse was also highlighted in the scandal of the Baby P case in the north London borough of Haringey, where a child was tortured to death despite the regular intervention of the local social services department.

When David Cameron asked Brown perfectly reasonable questions about this tragedy in the Commons the Prime Min­ister disgracefully accused the Tory leader of “playing politics” – as if the lethal bureaucracy of the Labour State should be above criticism.

Brown’s outburst was exposed as all the more reprehensible when it emerged that Ministers and the local Labour MP David Lammy had been warned for months about the dire state of Haringey Social Services. Again, in typical Labour fashion, local social worker Nevres Kemal – who had the courage to blow the whistle on the Haringey shambles – found herself driven out of her job and even investigated for abuse herself though Haringey was forced to drop the groundless case against her.

This has been the pattern under Brown’s Labour: shoot the messenger and crush debate. Open exchange, the lifeblood of democracy, is being killed by Labour.

We have seen the same over immigration, where critics are portrayed as racist, or Muslim extremism, where the charge of Islamophobia is used to avoid discussion. In the same way, the Government refused to have a public debate about the Lisbon Treaty but instead, in contravention of all its pledges, signed up to the EU Constit­ution without a referendum.

The imposition of Left-wing ideology is now supported by a huge panoply of civic institutions, including a politicised police force, an aggressive diversity industry, a State propaganda machine costing more than £400million a year, and an institutionally Left-wing BBC.

In the climate of oppression, State snoopers have the right to investigate our financial affairs, demand entry to our homes for council tax purposes and monitor our rubbish disposal. Soon the tyranny will become even worse, once the National Identity Register is fully established and the Gov­ern­ment has grabbed the legal powers to monitor every phone call and every e-mail we send.

Throughout the Second World War, Winston Churchill allowed robust debate to continue in the Commons, believing that such exchanges were vital to the health of the nation, in contrast to the desp­otism of Germany. But then Churchill was a democrat and true patr­iot, unlike the treacherous, incompetent ideologues who currently run the country.