More from The Week

I wonder whether our Prime Minister is historically minded enough to have compared himself lately with Stanley Baldwin? When Mr Blair was told that the Prince of Wales intended to marry Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles, would his first thought have been of what starchy old Stan went through in 1936, when a King of England wanted to marry his divorced mistress? Would he have recalled that, then, such a thing was deemed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and respectable society to be impossible? Would he have considered advising the Queen that, like Edward VIII, Prince Charles could not be crowned King if he chose to marry? I doubt it.

For a negative interpretation of events in which the rest of the world can see nothing but good, the Guardian’s editorial pages are much to be recommended. Sure enough, on Monday, while millions of Iraqis were waking up with stained fingers to the first day of democratic Iraq and enjoying generous tributes to their courage from sometime opponents of war such as Vladimir Putin, Salim Lone, the former director for the UN’s special mission in Iraq, was whining in the Guardian about the unfairness of it all. The risks taken by voters, candidates and election organisers, he declared, were in vain: ‘A high turnout does not change the fact that this is an illegitimate, occupier’s election.

Last week the Conservative party unveiled an extremely good policy: to cut government waste to the tune of £35 billion and to pass £4 billion worth of it to the public in tax cuts. This week it unveiled two much less good ones: to set an arbitrary limit on the number of immigrants allowed to come to Britain and to withdraw from the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. ‘Britain has reached a turning point,’ wrote the Conservative leader Michael Howard in a full-page advertisement in the Sunday Telegraph. ‘Our communities cannot absorb newcomers at today’s pace.’ Taken literally, Mr Howard’s statement is true. According to the Office for National Statistics, in 2003 there was a net inflow of 151,000 migrants into Britain.

It may seem trivial, when so many thousands lie dead on the shores of the Indian Ocean, but we are now perhaps 14 weeks from a general election, and it is time to consider the apparent — the appalling — success of the Labour government. In circumstances that would be almost fatal to a Tory administration, Mr Blair has just lost a close Cabinet colleague. He has recently returned from Baghdad, where he saw the catastrophic consequences of the coalition operation in Iraq. Many of us who supported the war did so in the hope that it would be in the interests of the Iraqi people. Those hopes now look forlorn.

The universal predicament which confronts the western world at the start of the 21st century concerns the breakdown of boundaries. Philosophers blur the distinction between good and evil; society no longer protects family life; sociologists applaud the collapse of class barriers; globalisation challenges national borders; postmodernism asserts that truth and falsehood are the same. The act of adultery, with its savage betrayal of marriage, is the most accessible metaphor for our sorrowful modern predicament. At Westminster, as elsewhere, we suffer from transgression of boundaries. There are numerous examples of this in contemporary politics. One of the most curious is the collapse of the dividing line between politician and journalist.

Jack Straw, though by no means a distinguished foreign secretary, nevertheless possesses animal cunning. He is an acknowledged master of dissimulation, contrivance, machination, manoeuvre, evasion, guile, trickery, craft, diversion, disguise, distortion, persiflage, falsehood, deception, sophistry, stealth, artifice, sharp practice, underhand dealing, sleight of hand, subterfuge, prevarication and every other stratagem of concealment and deceit. Occasionally, however, the Foreign Secretary is capable of candour. This was the case with his parliamentary answer to Michael Ancram, the shadow foreign secretary, two weeks ago. Ancram wearily asked Jack Straw when the British government first knew of the botched coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea last March.

Events are now moving very fast. By this time next week, the Bill to ban hunting will have received royal assent. The fight to halt this oppressive piece of legislation is moving away from Parliament, into the courts and, probably, on to the streets. The government is preparing with great care for the looming battle. According to trustworthy accounts from rural communities, the police have already started work setting up a network of informers. They are offering cash. I know of one huntsman who was visited by a police officer and offered ‘a formal arrangement so that you won’t need to cover any expenses’. There is plenty of evidence that approaches like these are being made all over the country.