I read in the Daily Telegraph that my photograph at the Wantage Conservative Office is riddled with holes made by pins or darts
On the train down to Broadstairs to campaign for Steve Ladyman - whose majority in South Thanet is only 1,800 over the Conservatives - I read my press cuttings. These include a remarkably silly piece by Roy Hattersley in the Guardian, saying how pleased he is by signs that one-time Tory voters who supported Blair in 1997 and 2001 may be turning away - thus restoring Labour, so he says, to the ownership of "real" party
members. This approach reminds me of why Labour flopped in 1987 and again in 1992, when he was in the leadership. Roy should stick to belles-lettres, in which he has found his real vocation.
Meanwhile, I am looking for ex-Tories, and I find in Broadstairs they are all still behind Ladyman. As a candidate myself in seven general elections, I know that it is only in the last few days that people really focus on how they will vote - but that you can tell a lot from whether they are friendly or hostile to one's solicitations beforehand.
Broadstairs people are indeed friendly, and very willing to take Labour literature away with them. If we can hold on in South Thanet, the Labour parliamentary majority will be well over a hundred.
I take a break from campaigning to attend a lecture at Chatham House on "The Indian Economy in an Age of Globalisation". It is given by Montek Singh Ahluwalia, head of the Indian Planning Commission. Montek was a close friend at Oxford, but we haven't met for nearly 40 years. I ask how India will play the important hand she has in the Doha world trade talks - the biggest current issue in world politics. His answer refers to the need to reduce agricultural protectionism in America, Japan and Europe - which brings home to me a link between India and our depressingly parochial general election. If the Conservatives win, all our energies for several years will be devoted to managing the crisis Michael Howard seeks to provoke in Britain's relationship with the EU. In this event, there would be no negotiating capital to spare for steering Europe towards the market-opening stance that will be needed to make the Doha round a success.
More campaigning in marginal seats between Labour and Conservative in the south-east, where the chances of excellent Labour candidates again depend on retaining the ex-Tory vote. I find the same friendly reactions at Broadstairs. In the kind of comfortable, owner-occupied territory in Sittingbourne where the Conservatives have to win to form a government, a retired couple invite me in for a glass of orange squash. On the chimney piece, there is a photograph of their daughter's graduation ceremony. They are members, they tell me, of "the second-oldest bowls club in the world" (founded in 1540) at Milton Regis. They will both be voting Labour.
On Sunday morning I watch the inauguration ceremony for the new Pope. I have an interest in ancient philosophy, so my ears prick up when I hear him invoke the patristic definition of human individuals as "thoughts in the mind of God". He goes on to say that every individual is thus loved by God: also, that each individual is "necessary". This suggests the heresy of the pre-existence of souls, for which Origen was condemned at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553. If the individual soul is necessary, then it is eternal, and if eternal, it pre-exists the body. So why not transmigration - as Plato thought and as Buddhism teaches? As he is an unlikely heretic, I decide that the Holy Father probably meant that the individual is "important", rather than "necessary".
In my old Wantage constituency in Oxfordshire, I have been supporting the excellent first-time Labour candidate, Mark McDonald. I read in the Daily Telegraph that my photograph at the Wantage Conservative Office is riddled with holes made by pins or darts. This is a nasty version of the sort of exaggerated political tribalism also on display in Hattersley's article. One of the great virtues of "Blairism" is that it tends to dissolve polarisations which are, frankly, distasteful to most of the electorate.
Robert Jackson (ex-Tory, now Labour) is standing down as MP for Wantage
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