In the first of my nightmare scenarios, I am being held at knifepoint by robbers who have stolen my bank cards. Tell us your PINs or you’ll die, they say. And, knees knocking with despair, I hear myself trying to explain that even if I give them the right numbers, I’m right up against my overdraft limit and all they’ll get will be a message saying Insufficient Funds for Withdrawal. Tell my loved ones that’s my epitaph, I sob, as the knife descends.

In the second scenario, my name is David Miliband (I know, I know, a far worse nightmare) and I’ve just been asked to repay £434 to the House of Commons. And I’m trying to explain that right now, at this point of the month, I just can’t quite, you know, stretch to that without running the risk of even greater embarrassment if the cheque bounces. But if we could just wait a teensie three or four days then my salary will be in and of course you can have the money.

In the third nightmare (Elm Street, this one) my name is Phil Hope and I am the Care Services Minister. I have said I will pay back more than £41,000. Just shoot me now, I cry, for all is lost. Even if I work until I am 90 I will never have that much money sitting there.

I mean — £41,000? The horror! What will he do? Even Jack Straw, £600? Nick Clegg, £910? How will they manage? Because I bet even government ministers, just like the rest of us, bump along the bottom most of the time.

Forget the politics. The true fascination of the repayments hoo-ha is how it’s exposed an intensely personal issue, one that most of us, in our shame, would rather keep totally secret. It’s that dreaded question: how much do you keep in your bank account?

Who wants their fiscal scattiness revealed? This is a personality-defining matter; an issue so intimate, so secret, that most people are more likely to tell a stranger what they earn, or who they’re having an affair with, than to admit that they are so disorganised they’re lucky if, close to payday, they can persuade the cash machine to give them £50. Because this isn’t about what you earn, it’s about attitudes to life itself.

Normal people live to the limits of the income. Spend, be generous, make loved ones happy. If we have extra funds, we repay mortgages more quickly, or book a holiday, or dump it in an ISA. More to the point, we regard with the deepest suspicion those who do keep a few thousand sloshing around, instantly accessible. Useful, maybe, but the true badge of irredeemable oddness, I’d say. And certainly not the kind of people we want running the country.

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