It is hard to imagine that the Party can overcome a deficit of £27 million without severely hampering its ability to adequately finance efective election campaigns for many years.
The first thing to do is to get control of the expenditure before things get even worse. The amount of annual interest alone must be in excess of £1million.
It is the the responsibilty of the NEC to ensure that the Party is effectively managed. Unfortunately, successive NEC's over the past 10 years have not accepted their responsibilities either in a political or managerial sense. We have probably suffered the weakest NEC in the Party's history. Happily, it appears that the current NEC does seem to have more of a backbone than their predecessors.
The NEC need to agree a long term business plan with the Party's bankers which unfortunately must involve large staff cuts. They must also urgently look for alternative sources of income. It is difficult to believe that wealthy individuals will continue to lavish their millions on us now that there is little that can be offered in return.
That leaves state aid, the trade unions and the members. I believe that there is a strong case for state aid but not at the expense of severing our links with the trade unions. But make no mistake, state aid will not be a popular measure with the electorate.
This leaves the two groups who have been continually shunned, ignored and even abused by the Prime Minister and his allies. The party members and the trade unions. Despite the way they have been treated, I have no doubt that they will cough up to the best of their ability though it will take many years to get the Party back to financial health.
We must learn lessons from this and future NEC's must never forget their responsibilty to the Party and the membership.

The government is always telling overspending hospital trusts to stay within their means. Parties should do the same. Tax is not collected to get politicans out of their debts, it is for public services. Their ineptitude should not be rewarded. If they cannot make enough money from their donors (all of which should be declared - donations/loans/freebies) and members, then they need to spend less on stupid TV adverts and billboard campaigns. Politicans get huge amounts of free TV and radio air time. They should use this to get their message across, not glossy pamphlets that go straight in the bin. I have no desire to pay taxes towards creating more rubbish.