You said:
Yes – 76%
No – 24%

I feel a sense of almost saint-like righteousness as I utter that phrase. It alone is touché to the planet-bothering fraternity. I am on the side of good and the angels.

Although, to be honest, the minutia of this sacrifice doesn’t bear too much scrutiny. I had a car and I hated it. It used to sit outside and send me bills. Besides, a man of my thirst is ill-advised to venture out in the evening in control of a motor vehicle. And even if I could find a space, I couldn’t afford to park in central London. Sometimes the car took us to the supermarket, but mostly it just rusted. Plus there’s a tube a 10-minute walk away and two all-night buses pass the end of the street.

I also have a recycling bin, which means empty bottles don’t crowd the kitchen. So I like to think I’m doing my bit.

Better still, I manage to look virtuous while making no personal effort or sacrifice. That’s what I call a result.

Then, suddenly last week, my world was darkened. We had a power cut. The electricity went off in five flats, thrusting its occupants, myself included, into the Dark Ages. No, even earlier. We entered a primeval existence.

It wasn’t long before I heard the wailing of the neighbours. Edie, gaunt and frail, leaned on the rail of the balcony and said she hadn’t been able to boil the kettle. She hadn’t had a cup of tea for an hour and a half. Sue lamented the loss of the contents of her freezer (probably a tin of cat food and an empty tin of Tennents) in uncompromising terms. Mrs B, the posh one, said she was having guests to dinner and the wine wouldn’t be chilled properly, ignoring the fact that it was freezing.

“But if there’s no electricity, you won’t have any food to give them”, I pointed out.

“Then the wine will have to be perfect.”

To escape the despondent air, I went into my rapidly-chilling premises, saying I’d make a few calls. I picked up the cordless phone to find it didn’t work without electricity. That was when it began to dawn on me how utterly dependent we are on the stuff.

The electricity goes off and the central heating doesn’t come on. There’s nothing to charge up your phones, laptops and iPods. The pump in the goldfish’s tank stops and it’s instantly lying on its back, gasping. No kettle, no telly, no clothes washer, no light. There are candles somewhere at the nether end of the pitch-black cupboard under the stairs. Your fate lies in the hand of the electricity people. And they’re French.

Well, mine are. I get my bills from the EDF, the Electricité de France. The French have wrestled control of London’s electricity supply. If we ever cheese them off again, they won’t have to invade. They can just cut off our electricity and we’ll be garlic butter in their hands.

When I was young, we were on a coin meter, so we were plunged into darkness on a regular basis. Each time, it took on the air of a French farce. Someone trod on the dog that took a nip at Harry who spilled his tea into someone’s lap. The rest of us all edged our way in the blackness feeling through each other’s pockets for shillings or anything else useful or with an exchange value. There was a theoretical supply of shilling coins hidden in the kitchen. Not well hidden enough, though.

Losing the lecky was part of the life experience, like the monster spider in the outside toilet, the hypochondriac canary that needed to be revived with brandy and Uncle Harry’s pig and habit of paring his toenails in front of the fire with an industrial rasp. His own toenails, not the pig’s.

Today a power cut is a much more sober affair. We’ve become electricity junkies. Fifteen minutes after a fix, we’re screaming for more. We’re so dependent that, when the electricity went off, I switched off, too. I went to bed. It’s like I’m connected to the national grid. As soon as there’s a hiccup in my supply, I cease to function.

This is all really serious, because the only alternatives are to produce more electricity or cut down the amount we use. If it’s a case of having a Sellafield clone in the garden or developing my own strategies for power saving, like hiding Edie’s kettle, then I’m turning green (which I suppose I would anyway with a Sellafield in the garden). We’ll have to slow down, take more time off, relax and enjoy life. Sounds a bit 1960s, I know, but it’s the best we can do.

Did I mention I don’t have a car?

As lurid allegations concerning Gordon Brown have filled newspapers over the past few weeks, there seems to be an indecent haste applied to the past by the media. Members of the Thatcher Foundation seem to be the only people observing any three-decade purdah these days: recently throwing light on the Iron Lady’s pre-1979 general election diet.

The much-missed Spitting Image had an influence on politics in the 1980s, with its satirical take on a decade of record unemployment, the miners’ strike and the beginnings of yuppie culture. The fate of the SDP-Liberal alliance was allegedly sealed by the use of latex puppets of their two leaders – with a tiny David Steel in the pocket of David Owen, although the former was actually the taller of the two. While Spitting Image was clearly a joking matter, with the more recent vogue for docu-drama, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction. This was apparent in BBC 4’s On Expenses, which had television columnists straying into political commentary. This “Expensesgate” comedy pillorying former Speaker Michael Martin shows that deference for politicians is no more. We live in times of “accelerated” culture when ongoing events are dramatised for laughs.

When the actor playing investigative journalist Ben Leapman, who broke the scandal, first appeared onscreen, I felt compelled to text Ben, a friend at university, that I’d just seen “him” on telly – although the genuine article is much better-looking than the actor. Leapman himself has written in the Daily Telegraph about being played by someone else – adding that he has never owned a duffel coat.

Margaret Thatcher has had her early political career turned into drama in The Long Road to Finchley. There was also a TV play about the events leading to her resignation.

Notwithstanding Tony Blair at the Chilcot inquiry again demonstrating his superlative acting skills, the former Prime Minister has been fictionalised more than most. The Deal was about his pact with Gordon Brown. There has also been the feature film The Queen and Channel 4’s The Trial of Tony Blair.

What next – a comedy special reprising the “bullygate” row? Brown’s pledge to “fight every inch of the way” takes on whole new meaning. Again, the recent fracas highlights the difficulties in distinguishing fact from fiction. Brown’s TV tears were surreal enough, but we don’t really have much evidence when it comes to the allegations of his shortcomings. Walking hurriedly past someone on the stairs hardly constitutes threatening behaviour.

The story that some Number 10 staffers had telephoned an anti-bullying helpline soon began to take on the hallmarks of a plot to spread anti-Labour poison as more details emerged. When Ann Widdecombe resigned as trustee, it hastened the demise of the charity  its phone line was briefly suspended last wekk.

Channel 4’s Tower Block of Commons, in which some MPs volunteered to live in social housing for a week, has also had a hand in bringing politics to people’s front rooms. I was glued to the series, which featured the spectacle of a rapping Tory frontbencher, Tim Loughton. Labour’s Austin Mitchell discovered that his wife had suffered from depression as a young mother, when she empathised with a heroin-addicted estate-dweller. We also saw Tory Nadine Dorries put on a Somali costume to gather support for a community barbecue, leading to a strange exchange on a stairwell. Member of the public: “Are you a Muslim?” Dorries: “No, I’m an MP.”

The MPs almost turned into cartoon characters. There was clearly some trickery going on, too. It was hard to believe that the lads who jeered at Liberal Democrat Mark Oaten for his rent boy indiscretions would have known about that episode in his past without some prompting.

Whether we are talking about dramas concerning the likes of Winnie Mandela, Mo Mowlam, David Blunkett and Dr David Kelly or reality TV featuring politicians, it is apparent that we live in an age of hyper-reality where fiction and reality are blurring. This confirms the view of postmodernist sociologists who talk of that accelerated culture where the past catches up with us at a dizzying pace.

When French philosopher Jean Baudrillard declared that the first Gulf war had never happened, referring to the numbing effect of the highly mediated coverage of that conflict, it seemed like a pretentious statement about distant events. Now the observation seems apposite.

The 30-year rule was always difficult to justify in a climate of freedom of information. Let’s hope the revised version is a success.

Rupa Huq blogs at www.rupahuq.co.uk

We’ve seen it in recent local by-elections, too, where Labour has been winning back council seats. And it’s now being reflected in the opinion polls, which have been narrowing month by month.

The shift in the polls and rising trust ratings for Labour on the economy can be traced back to the Pre-Budget Report in December, when Alistair Darling set out to the country how we will secure the recovery fairly and the clear choice with the Conservatives.

Labour’s approach is to steadily reduce the deficit once the recovery has been secured and halve it in four years, invest in growth and jobs for the future, fair tax rises and protecting frontline investment in schools, hospitals and the police. In sharp contrast, the Tories are still embracing the “Treasury view” of the 1930s and the Thatcherite economics of the 1980s that cutting spending immediately is the only option, and seem willing to put growth and jobs at risk to do so.

People are now looking at this choice and rejecting the Tory decade of austerity. So when David Cameron keeps saying: “Vote for change”, voters are rightly starting to ask what sort of change. And they are asking whether Cameron’s change is a change they and their families can afford.

It’s clear to me that the reason why the Tories – with their Notting Hill crisis meetings last week – are starting to wobble and panic is not just their shrinking poll lead. It’s because they’ve been rumbled. They’ve been found out.

Cameron’s strategy was clear – to talk about change, glide through to the general election without scrutiny and get a mandate by stealth. He hoped that “Time for a change” would be a loud enough cry, without people ever stopping to ask what kind of change.

However, as my opposite number Michael Gove recently said about the need for the Tories to select a few more women, black and minority ethnic candidates to try to give the appearance that the Conservative Party has changed: “Like a conjuror, we’ll get more applause if the audience cannot see exactly how the trick is performed”.

Cameron and the Tories thought they could just coast into office through warm words on camera – and keep their real plans off camera. But the British people are a bit smarter, and rightly more sceptical, than that. They’ve seen the smoke and mirrors. The illusion is slowly being shattered. This strategy of airbrushing and concealment is no longer working.

We saw a great example of this strategy on Sunday when Gove was a guest on the BBC’s Politics Show. Even though I was on the same programme that afternoon, he refused to debate with me.

But the fact is the Tories are finding it increasingly hard to duck the difficult questions. As voters – followed by some parts of the media – have started to ask those questions in recent weeks, the Tories have been found wanting.

We’ve seen it week after week on some of their flagship policies – from marriage tax breaks to how far to cut public spending this year to their free-market schools experiment, which saw standards fall and inequality rise when it was tried in Sweden.

We saw it on Monday this week when the billionaire Tory donor and vice-chairman Lord Ashcroft finally admitted his true tax status that he concealed for 10 years. And, in their desperate attempt to talk our country down and paint Britain as broken, with dodgy statistics on violent crime and teenage pregnancies, the Tories have been well and truly caught out.

So we will keep asking those questions. Why put the recovery at risk by ignoring the international consensus with immediate cuts in spending? Why is cutting inheritance tax for millionaires still their priority? And, as I wrote in this column last month, why do they want to take Sure Start, tax credits and child trust funds away from families on modest and middle incomes?

Of course, we cannot simply rely on the Conservatives collapsing for us to win this election. We have to stand on and defend our record. And we have to set out a positive vision for a fair future  – including one-to-one tuition for children falling behind, an education or training place for all young people up to the age of 18 and our one-week cancer guarantee.

But since all these policies are opposed by David Cameron’s Tories, we must set out the choice on the doorsteps, in workplaces and at school gates. Do we secure the recovery or put it at risk? Do we support new industries and future jobs or threaten an age of austerity? Do we protect frontline services such as schools, Sure Start, and the police or do we cut them?

I believe this will be the most important general election in a generation. There is a lot at stake. In the coming weeks, we must step up the fight and set out the choice, because this is an election we can win.

Ed Balls is Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families and Labour and Co-operative MP for Normanton

It is difficult to grasp what the Conservatives would do to education if they win the general election. There have been some rather reactionary statements – especially from Shadow Schools Secretary Michael Gove – but there is no great clarity when it comes to the educational principles behind their policies.

“Raising educational standards for all” is a mantra used by all three main political parties, but the key question they need to answer is how. It is essential that politicians understand the current position. As things stand, all schools manage themselves and have done so since 1988 when Margaret Thatcher’s Government introduced local management. Local authorities have powers to intervene, but only in specific circumstances – such as when a school fails an Ofsted inspection. Academy schools have much the same powers as any other school, except when it comes to admissions. The choices they are able to make reduce parental ones. Allowing all schools to become academies would not raise standards and would be unpopular with many Tory-controlled councils. And what will be the solution to a failing academy school? In fact, standards in most schools have been rising every year for some time, although it seems the Conservative Party has yet to realise this.

The Tories say they want to follow the Swedish example and allow anyone to set up a new school. This is a diversion. The reality is that any group of parents in this country who want set up a school are able to do this under existing legislation. There are few instances of this.

What is emerging from the Conservatives is a collection of rather odd ideas. Most centre on schools and there is little reference to policies relating to adults, further education or the skills agenda.

The grants for poorer 16-19-year-old students, introduced by Labour in 2001, would be abolished under the Tories. This is in spite of the success of these grants in improving the recruitment and retention of students from poorer backgrounds.

The Tories would take away the right of parents to appeal against their child being expelled from school. In consequence, the courts would be far more likely to become involved in such cases.

According to the Tories, examinations have become easier. Presumably they want to make them more difficult, which suggests that more students would get lower grades.

There are hints that university fees will rise considerably. If that happens, the cost of loans will increase and the target of 50 per cent of young people being able to go to university will not be reached.

The Tories say it is essential to increase parental choice. However, that can only be accomplished by increasing the number of surplus places in schools. And that is an expensive solution.

Teachers’ pay and conditions would be left to individual schools to decide. No one should be surprised if the number of cases referred to employment tribunals increases as a result.

The Conservatives seem wedded to the idea of a separation between academic courses and vocational ones, in spite of many employers arguing that this is outmoded in the 21st century.

While school budgets have increased considerably under Labour, a David Cameron government would probably seek to cut back on new school building programmes. And, for some inexplicable reason, the Tories want to scrap Sure Start.

Although they have pledged to spend more money on adult education, the Tories do not seem to realise the full seriousness of the situation. More than 20 per cent of adults have literacy or numeracy problems.

Thanks to Labour, primary school classes are now smaller and limited to 30 pupils from ages five to seven. There are a record number of teaching assistants in schools. Britain’s teachers are now among the best paid in Europe. Exam results are getting better every year at every level. Early years provision has been greatly improved and the new diplomas are opening up new opportunities for 14-19-year-olds in terms of job prospects and the development of essential skills.

On all this, the Tories are strangely quiet. Their policies are dominated by their schools agenda and they seem keen to end the strategic involvement of local government in education. In contrast, Labour is stressing the importance of lifelong learning and the different needs of adults at different times in their lives. Education has to be about much more than what we do before we go to work. It has to be available to people throughout their lives in both formal and informal settings.

The 2010 election gives Labour the chance to stress the significant differences between the parties and show why people should continue to trust Labour as the party that believes in educational opportunities for everyone.

Graham Lane is a former chair of the Local Government Association’s education committee

The public reaction to Rawnsley’s accusations of bullying may have had something to do with the fact that we weren’t really learning very much that was new. Everyone has known for years that Brown has a foul temper when roused – and that the thing that roused him most was Tony Blair’s serial refusal to honour his pledge to make way for his Chancellor.

However, that doesn’t entirely account for the sharp fall in the Tory poll lead just after the Rawnsley “revelations”. That remarkable event seems to suggest that we Brits actually like to think that our rulers are, if not bullies, then certainly pretty robust characters. I imagine most of us have experienced bosses who shout, many of us have seen bits of office or factory equipment flying through the air and a few of us may even have witnessed the odd punch thrown. It certainly happened routinely in Fleet Street, where you would have been regarded as rather a wimp if you took it too much to heart.

In fact, most voters appreciate that almost all our recent prime ministers were – at least on Rawnsley’s rather wide definition of the word – bullies. Certainly Margaret Thatcher was. I still bear the scars of an occasion when she disliked something I had written, told me so in vigorous (although not obscene) language, and emphasised her points by stabbing me repeatedly in the chest with a steely finger.

But I didn’t think the worse of her for it. On the contrary, while I detested pretty well everything she stood for, I admired her brand of conviction politics and saw her minor physical assault on me as just another manifestation of it. My feeling was that it was a pity our lot hadn’t got equally steely fingers to back up equally firm convictions.

Ted Heath, similarly, was a considerable grump, although it was moderated by a genuinely lovable streak in private which made many of his victims forgive him. Contrary to widespread opinion, John Major had a vicious temper when crossed. And even Jim Callaghan could be fairly nasty early in his career – although, surprisingly, he mellowed once he reached Number 10. That was astonishing, seeing the appalling problems and the appalling people he had to deal with.

Harold Macmillan, of course, was a complete phoney – “the Old Actor-Manager”, as my friend Alan Watkins used to call him, put on his “unflappable” act while often flapping away like mad. One of those flaps led to the greatest act of bullying of his premiership – the so-called night of the long knives, in which he sacked nearly half his cabinet in one go. Jeremy Thorpe, the Liberal leader, remarked: “Greater love hath no man than that he lay down his friends for his life.”

But there was one Prime Minister in my long stint at Westminster who was very far from being a bully: Harold Wilson. Indeed, Harold was a victim of bullying for most of his two terms in Downing Street. The bully was his secretary, Marcia Williams, now Lady Falkender. She, not Wilson, was the one who threw things – and her tirades were legendary among all those within earshot.

Mind you, I suspect that Marcia was often right, and she frequently kept her boss up to the mark in matters of loyalty to good old Labour Party principles. She was one of the few people who dared tell him the truth when he’d made a bad speech. Perhaps matters would have been a good deal better now if Tony Blair had had a Marcia instead of an Alastair to bully him.

Coincidentally, Wilson’s very own Alastair Campbell died last month. A nice chap, Trevor Lloyd-Hughes was Downing Street press secretary in the early years of Harold’s first term. Like Alastair, he was a former

lobby journalist, in his case for Wilson’s local Liverpool newspaper. But he approached

his job more like a civil servant than as a journalist.

This meant that he was the very antithesis of a spin-doctor. He primly refused to get involved in low politics, leaving that sort of thing to people such as Gerald Kaufman, who was the junior lad in the Downing Street team. It was an arrangement which, frankly, didn’t work for either side. In the end, he went and was replaced by the much more muscular Joe Haines, who threw his weight around in a way which Campbell was to adopt and embellish more than 20 years later.

But back to the present. Wouldn’t it be a laugh if Labour did manage to hold more seats than the Tories and Gordon Brown was returned to Downing Street at the head of a minority government? What will Polly Toynbee say then, I wonder?

Lord Ashcroft’s enforced tax-dodging admission is the latest piece in a jigsaw creating the picture of a party fundamentally unchanged. Nasty as ever and motivated by elitism, presenting the interests of a few as the duty of the many, the wheels are wobbling on the old banger with a spray job.

The Tory spring conference in Brighton last weekend was haunted by fear – the fear that Cameron will lose in 2010 as Michael Howard did in 2005, William Hague in 2001 and John Major in 1997. Gone are the cockiness, the arrogant belief that victory was in the bag, the swagger and the smiles. The closing polls tell the story of an electorate scrutinising the Tories and deciding they aren’t convinced by what they see.

The most telling political soundbite of recent months was Gordon Brown’s appeal in Warwick for the electorate to take a second look at Labour and a long, hard look at the Conservatives. In that sentence, he expressed a credible political strategy, acknowledging the election needed to be turned into a choice if Labour was to have a cat in hell’s chance, disrupting the Tory strategy of a one-party contest by running a referendum on a rickety Government showing wear and tear after

13 years.

The Cashcroft affair is a gift which doesn’t require a “long, hard look”, because people on low and middle incomes, plus doubtless a few high earners without access to offshore accounts, understandably resent billionaires avoiding tax while the party in which they hold a prominent position is preparing to scythe public services. When voters look longer and harder, I suspect their nervousness will grow not lessen.

Cameron’s Conservatives remain a band rooted in Thatcherism, making a fetish of cutting services and retching at the very thought of public spending. The “Vote for Change” slogan may be borrowed from Barack Obama, but the Old Etonian David Cameron – who backed Republican John McCain – offers none of the vision, hope or energy of the winner in the United States.

Obama recognises and attempts to harness the potential power of the state to improve lives. Cameron identifies the state as an enemy, a force for bad to be shrunk and bypassed. The role of government remains a dividing line between Labour and the Conservatives – the “helping hand” which helps us stay healthy, teaches our kids, guarantees employment rights against avaricious employers, keeps us safe and 1,001 other things we perhaps only truly value when they’ve gone.

With admittedly a lot of help from stumbling Tories, the Labour Party has become unexpectedly successful at spotlighting Conservative failings, but what do voters see when they take that “second look” at Labour?

Certainly, the Government’s record isn’t anywhere near as bad or the Prime Minister as incompetent as the Cons recklessly misrepresented him when foolishly underestimating a wily campaigner.

I’m as angry as Billy Bragg over the billions expended on banksters as greedy as ever. However, without the autumn 2008 rescue, masterminded by Brown and Alistair Darling, the entire financial system would have collapsed – the recession just gone lingering as a job-destroying great slump.

Yet to kick on, to entice voters to put an “X” next to a Labour candidate’s name, Labour still has to construct a programme and tell a convincing story. Playing the fear card to warn what the Tories would do is all good and well, but it will ultimately fail – and deservedly so – unless Labour sketches out a future worth going to the ballot booth for.

Fairness needs to be at the heart of every policy and statement. Missed goals and own goals since 1997 are no reason to be shy of restating the party’s historic goal of creating a more equal society.

Social justice is a political dividing line between the two main parties, blurred over the decades for sure, but the widening gulf between the country’s poorest and richest – with the lot in the middle nearer those at the bottom than the top when wealth is measured – means it remains the most powerful clarion call of all.

Because to produce a manifesto promising all pain and no gain would disappoint those taking a second look at Labour and make them think a gamble on Cameron is a punt they might take.

The cliché that oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them contains a ring of truth. But Labour is back from the dead and clawing its way back into the race. So it is better to be bold than to invite defeat through paralysis and self-doubt, which are ultimately self-defeating.

Party discipline would see a train timetable or similar endorsed as the manifesto when the Clause V meeting is called, for the Cabinet and National Executive Committee to do the dirty deed. But it would be better to pass something worth voting for instead of a bland, safety-first document. The problem is, despite all the policy forum sessions, I for one have heard little to be excited about. So far.

The depth of local feeling on this issue was made clear at the Mayor’s “Environment Question Time” event in Ilford in January, where I was on the platform as chair of the London Assembly’s environment committee. During contributions from the floor, speaker after speaker complained about the disturbance suffered by those living under the City Airport flight path. In reply, Boris told the audience that he felt their pain, but unfortunately there was nothing he could do about it. The planning authority in this case was Newham council and he had no powers to intervene.

But Boris’ expressions of regret were the purest hypocrisy. Under his predecessor, there was a clear and robust policy on City Airport expansion. Ken Livingstone’s administration had urged Newham council to reject City Airport’s application for an increase in flights on the grounds of environmental  impact and noise. If the council did not agree to this, the Mayor’s position was that the government should call in the application and convene a public inquiry, and that the Government Office for London should prohibit Newham from granting planning permission pending a decision by the Secretary of State.

One of Boris’ early decisions as Mayor was to overturn this policy. In July 2008, in a letter to Newham council, he paid tribute to “the contribution London City Airport makes to London’s world city status, and the benefits the airport offers to the City and Canary Wharf”. In light of that, he continued: “I offer support for the expansion sought by London City Airport…. I shall therefore be writing separately to the Government Office for London, withdrawing earlier objections, and confirming my support for the current proposals.”

So while Boris was bidding for popular support by opposing airport expansion at Heathrow, he was giving it the green light in east London. To cap it all, Doug Oakervee, the architect of the Mayor’s plan for a new airport in the Thames Estuary, has declared himself unavailable to defend that proposal before the environment committee, suggesting that Boris’ fantasy island is dead in the water. The Mayor’s lack of any coherent strategic policy towards airport expansion in London is plain to see.

Murad Qureshi is a Labour member of the London Assembly

Up to 290,000 public sector jobs could disappear by 2014 to pay for the bailout of the banks, according to an authoritative analysis of planned cutbacks by an independent think-tank.

The findings – ignored by the national media earlier this year – come from the Centre for Cities, a think-tank funded by the Gatsby Foundation, and suggest that cuts planned by both the Tories and Labour will have a devastating impact on a number of major British towns and cities.

The findings come from a background paper prepared last year to a report that was widely covered which showed a north-south divide growing between cities as the recession bites.

The paper by researcher by Kieran Larkin draws on planned spending cuts by all major parties and looks at the pattern of Conservative spending cuts imposed by John Major’s “cull of the quangos” – a policy which David Cameron promises to repeat.

Mr Larkin himself admits that the figure could be “a conservative estimate” – especially as Tony Travers of the LSE’s local government unit is now predicting 190,000 local government jobs could go. That is some 70,000 above the 120,000 estimated in this report.

It singles out five cities and towns where the impact will be devastating – Newcastle, Swansea, Ipswich, Hastings and Barnsley. The report says Newcastle will be vulnerable because the Liberal Democrat-controlled city council employs a large number of people and the city hosts two major quangos. One North East, the regional development agency, and HM Revenue and Customs’ National Insurance Contributions agency are based there.

The report estimates that 6,600 public sector jobs will go by 2014 – and before then if the Tories win the general election, because they want to abolish regional development agencies. Another 2,000 jobs will go in the private sector because of a big cut in spending power among local people.

Swansea, which has the headquarters of the Driver Vehicle Licence Agency, could lose 2,300 public sector jobs and another 700 in the private sector.

Ipswich (a Labour marginal) and Barnsley (a Labour heartlands seat) could lose 1,200 public sector jobs each. The seaside town of Hastings (another Labour marginal) could lose 600 public sector jobs if work in the Child Support Agency is cut back.

Other major cities facing severe problems are Belfast, Blackpool (two Labour marginals), Newport, Liverpool and Dundee.

Some cities with large public sector employment – particularly the university towns of Oxford and Cambridge – will not be so badly hit as the universities are expected to raise student tuition fees to keep academics in jobs. Cambridge, a hi-tech city, has been scarcely touched by the recession because of a vibrant private sector. But university support staff could be squeezed.

This is a landmark piece of legislation. As we mark its fifth anniversary, Labour should be proud of it and should promote it as evidence of the importance the party attaches to animal welfare. Rarely does an Act of Parliament make it so clear what is and what is not acceptable behaviour. The Hunting Act did just that. It was Labour’s commitment to the principle of what’s right and wrong writ large for all to see.

Of course, the Hunting Act is not without its critics, so it is worth remembering why some of us fought so hard for so long to get it onto the statute books.

The hunting ban is about animal welfare. It’s not about wrecking the countryside, knocking toffs off their horses, avenging the miners or any other fanciful and ridiculous claim put forward by the hunters. They bleat about their “human rights” and “civil liberties”, but it was this Labour Government that, through the Human Rights Act, enshrined the European Convention on Human Rights into British law. And it has always been Labour that has stood up for civil liberties and personal freedom. The Labour Party believes no genuine human right or civil liberty can be cruel – and the European Court of Human Rights concurred when it threw out the hunters’ case in December last year.

It was interesting to hear Government minister Angela Smith’s view when she addressed a conference fringe event organised by the League Against Cruel Sports (for which she worked before becoming a Labour MP) and the Labour Animal Welfare Society. Facing criticism about the Government’s record on animal welfare, she drew an analogy with Monty Python’s Life of Brian and the “What have the Romans ever done for us?” scene. She had a point. Some criticise Labour for not abolishing vivisection or outlawing some of the cruellest farming practices and banning live animal circuses. They have a point, too. But the Government has banned hunting – a fundamental step in animal welfare policy.

The debate has moved on since the fraught days which marked the passage of the bill through Parliament. Now it is vital to face down those who want to reverse the legislation and see a return to hunting.

The Hunting Act exists to put a stop to the hunting of wild mammals for sport. It isn’t designed to stop a farmer dealing with a fox that is attacking his livestock. It is not intended to stop pest control. The purpose of the Hunting Act is to stop people using an animal as an object of fun, as an expendable resource to be killed for “entertainment”.

The Countryside Alliance insists that hunts abide by the law. It says that only four registered hunts have been prosecuted since the Hunting Act came into force. But does that mean other hunts are breaking the law and getting away with it?

Some say the Hunting Act is ineffective, because it is used to prosecute people other than “hunters”. Certainly, hare coursers, for example, have been prosecuted. That is the point – stopping cruelty to animals. If someone is prosecuted under the Hunting Act, that suggests it is working.

Opponents of the legislation claim its effects of are entirely negative. They say it diminishes respect for Parliament. In fact, Parliament upheld the views of the majority by banning hunting. The legislation’s opponents say it puts “law-abiding people at risk of prosecution”. That’s as absurd as it would be to apply that preposterous claim to the Theft Act and burglars. The Hunting Act “diverts police attention away from real crime”. Dangerous drivers say something similar. Those who want to see the end of the Hunting Act describe it as  “a blatant example of political prejudice”, but they have no evidence for this. Finally, they say the act does nothing for animal welfare. How can a law that bans the hunting and killing of animals for “sport” have no discernible impact on their welfare?

The Labour Government was so concerned that a hunting ban might have adverse affects on the countryside and rural economy that it commissioned Lord Burns to conduct an independent inquiry into hunting with dogs (which counters the suggestion that the ban was pursued without any consideration). The Burns inquiry heard many hundreds of hours of oral evidence and took reams

of written evidence before reaching its conclusions.

One of the most interesting submissions came from the hunters and concerned the number of animals they killed. Given that the figures are their own, they may be an under-estimation. However, according to the hunters, they used to kill somewhere between 21,000 and 25,000 foxes every year.

That means they have been unable to cause the deaths of more than 125,000 foxes for sport since the Hunting Act came into force five years ago. If we include the figures for hares and stags, many more animals have been spared the suffering that hunts inflict.

On Boxing Day last year, Environment Secretary Hilary Benn launched Labour’s “Back the Ban” campaign to highlight the fact that the Tories want to repeal the Hunting Act. The Conservative Party is willing to ignore public opinion and bring back hare coursing, stag hunting and fox hunting. It is the champion of bloodsports. This is depressing, but not surprising.

Tory leader David Cameron is a former foxhunter. He is the descendent of hunters. He married into a major hunting family. Former leader William Hague, now the Shadow Foreign Secretary, has appeared in a pro-hunting DVD talking about the need for the Hunting Act to be repealed. He has been seeking active support for the Conservatives from the pro-hunting lobby in key marginal constituencies through the “Vote-OK” organisation.

Nick Herbert, one-time political officer for the British Field Sports Society, later of the Countryside Alliance and now Hilary Benn’s Tory shadow, travelled to India last year with the International Fund for Animal Welfare, but apparently still thinks it’s acceptable

for dogs to chase and kill wild animals

in the name of “sport”.

Tory parliamentary candidates throughout the country are signing up to this bloody manifesto – perhaps thinking it will ingratiate them with their party leadership. The majority of voters may feel differently.

Louise Bagshawe, the “chick lit” novelist standing for the Tories against Labour’s Phil Hope in Corby, Northamptonshire, appears in a “Vote-OK’” DVD to promote pro-hunting candidates in marginal seats. Yet she’s remarkably quiet about the hunting issue on her own website. The demographic of her constituency may have something to do that. Given Phil Hope’s bad press in the scandal over MPs’ expenses, it is clear that Labour in Corby is missing a trick by not highlighting his opponent’s desire to bring back hunting.

The silence in Corby epitomises what Labour is doing wrong nationally. The party should be proud of the Hunting Act and take advantage of the massive public support the legislation has, not tiptoeing around the issue.

We must take the stag by the horns, defend the Hunting Act and expose the same old nasty party as pro-hunting enthusiasts for bloodsports who don’t give a damn about the views of the voting majority.

Chris Williamson is Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Derby North. He is a trustee and former chair of the League Against Cruel Sports. The League is an independent charity and does not support any political party or candidate