Period of sterility

And, in the process, Wantage MP and former Tory education minister Robert Jackson has demonstrated both why new Labour has no effective opposition and why new Labour has been so successful at the ballot box.

Mr Jackson has made absolutely clear how convergent his and Mr Blair's ideas are on everything from the EU through the Iraq war to education and top-up fees.

He has, in the process, thoroughly trashed Tory leader Michael Howard.

This, of course, may be no bad thing in itself, since the said Mr Howard is a perfect example of the sheer poverty of ideas which has afflicted the Tories during their rightward charge.

But this charge was initiated by their desperation to put clear, blue water between themselves and Mr Blair's lurching new Labour, which has hoovered up and recycled virtually every Tory policy short of hanging and flogging.

And David Blunkett, in his late stint at the Home Office, showed signs of even straying toward that ungodly area of Tory heartland legend.

Mr Blair and his cronies have made no secret of the fact that stealing Tory policies is their preferred option in the fight for Tory voters, in fact, Mr Blunkett openly boasted of it.

But this has meant that the new Labour project has been, throughout its ascendancy, a period of utter political sterility.

The development of socialism in any country is a multifaceted phenomenon, with the battle for votes in a democratic Parliament only one of those facets.

If those votes are won by merely aping the right, not by a political battle to win the hearts and minds of the electorate for progressive ideas, then the electoral victories are hollow indeed, changing only the personnel at the top and cementing the rightward drift of British parliamentary politics and the ultimate ascendancy of globalised transnationals and the capitalist war machine.

The battle of ideas must be fought and won and all socialists in this country must be aware that Tony Blair has not won parliamentary victories with any relationship to the battle for socialism.

Which should give us all pause for thought. Abandoning the Labour Party to those right-wing elements which would drop politics for the sake of political expediency merely allows the populist drift to the right to continue.

There must be a fight made for the principles of socialism and that fight must be made in and around the battle to reclaim the Labour Party.

Either that, or the drift rightward will gather pace - and the pathetic and humiliating sight of Tory and Labour MPs acting as if their party loyalties are as interchangeable as Blair believes the policies to be will continue, eroding the gains made by generations in the battle for socialism and an end to capitalist exploitation.