I AM still reeling from the shock of appearing on the BBC's Question Time programme last week.
Following a question I put to the Prime Minister on what I call the 'English Question', the Question Time team asked whether I would like to go on last Thursday's show, as it would be broadcast from Scotland.
I readily agreed, but I wondered whether the powers that be in the Labour party would try and block my appearance. They did, or at least they tried.
It was presented to me that I should not go on and that any appearance by me on QT could lose Labour any number of elections in the foreseeable future.
This is the normal treatment. Last time I was on Radio 4's Any Questions?, the team refused to buckle to Labour pressure to get me off. This time the line was that I could not possibly understand complicated Scottish politics. They were really worried that I was going to express my views as an English MP and they didn't know how to handle this.
That is pretty worrying if this gang is in charge of how we run the campaign against the SNP's call for independence. But they need not have worried.
When the question came, I genuinely thought David Dimbleby had planted a joke question. We were told that a core issue in supporting independence was whether Scottish people would be pounds 500 better or worse off from independence.
If they could be convinced they would be pounds 500 better off they will kick the door shut to England. If independence was likely to make them pounds 500 worse off they would continue to tolerate us.
I was flabbergasted.
I see the whole of this debate within a majestic setting of how nations and peoples decide their own destiny.
Devolution, I believe, has already created gross injustices to English voters and we now need our own devolution measure, whatever Scotland decides in the independence referendum.
But I had expected that once in Scotland, I would be confronted by arguments about a Scottish people wishing to rise up and to embrace a future which they saw in terms of independent nationhood.
There was no talk of this. No hint that an independent Scotland may not only lift its peoples' aspirations further but also be a cultural beacon to a tired world. Oh no, it is just about the money.
I thought we could have been grounded in a debate on who should set the question for the referendum, for who sets the question will decide whether the answer gains legitimacy or not, and not only from a Scottish perspective, but from an English perspective too.
But here we were on Question Time, with the money changers outside the temple, scrabbling around to see who would give us the best rate.
I had gone to Scotland saddened by the thought that Scottish independence would be a loss for them, but also for us English. Instead, we can look forward to a squalid little referendum campaign with the winning side having the right to overturn the moneylenders' tables outside the temple.