. . . on a legal muddle, ranting historians and the wretched Rantzen

The law states that killing is a criminal act, and so is aiding and abetting people who kill themselves. Yet in cases of "assisted suicide" or "mercy killing", those guilty of criminal behaviour are often not prosecuted or, if successfully tried, they escape with a light penalty, such as probation or a suspended jail sentence. Of the 115 (or more) Britons who have consented (or so we hope) to be killed at the Swiss clinic Dignitas, nobody accompanying them, or otherwise assisting them to die, has ever been charged. So the law is a muddle.

Isn't that as it should be? To become an accessory to murder is a very grave step, and the knowledge that you might face prosecution, and 14 years in jail, compels you to consider carefully whether it is an act you can defend. Most people, therefore, will regulate themselves, considering, for example, if the patient is in his or her right mind and if, in some tiny corner of their own minds, they are influenced by financial gain or relief from the burden of care.

Those closest to the patient are surely best placed to establish whether life has truly become insupportable. If the law is clarified or codified - as the courts have demanded following a case brought by Debbie Purdy, who suffers from multiple sclerosis - bureaucracy and procedure will intrude into what ought to be private, intimate matters. Like 007, some people will have licence to kill, while many to whom life has become intolerable may be barred from leaving it for want of the correct papers. Harriet Harman suggests "a financial vested interest" would lead to prosecution. That would seem to rule out most close relatives from playing any role, which can hardly be what Purdy intended.

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It would be old-fashioned and probably chauvinist, too, to dislike Esther Rantzen for having an affair with and marrying a man (the late Desmond Wilcox) who already had a wife and three children, and then talking and writing about their union regardless of the ex-wife's feelings, as though it were one of history's great romances. And I always discount criticism of a woman for being overbearing and pushy, because men get away with that sort of thing all the time.

So I shall oppose Rantzen's attempt to become an MP on the basis of her policies. At least, I shall do so when I know what they are. I have a fair idea from BBC1's Question Time, where she thought it a jolly good idea to ask workers to take "voluntary" pay cuts. Like most consumer rights campaigners, the wretched Rantzen thinks all problems in life can be resolved by complaining. She has no interest in or understanding of social and economic power relationships, which is what politics is (or should be) about. In that, I am afraid, she represents the spirit of the age.

Increasingly, MPs are regarded as consumer advocates or welfare workers, trying to negotiate for their constituents special favours from government departments. This is important work, but a very impoverished conception of democratic politics. Why are historians so easily seduced into the columns of the cheap press? A J P Taylor probably started it in the 1950s with his Sunday Express column, where he ranted against, for example, speed limits and drink-driving laws. In the 1980s, a Bristol history professor called John Vincent, who had previously written blameless books about the Victorians, wrote a column for the Sun, which provoked students to disrupt his lectures. Their modern-day equivalent is Andrew Roberts, a regular in the Daily Mail's "why, oh why" slot, who was expertly skewered by Johann Hari in the Independent the other day. Even the New Statesman's contributor Dominic Sandbrook, who has written several excellent books of 20th-century history, resorted to using some handy clichés and contemporary myths while standing in for, of all people, Richard Littlejohn in the Mail - "eye-watering taxes", "hard-working middle-class families, "wealth creators", "gigantic public sector", to name a few.

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I have nothing against academics addressing the public - indeed, I wish they'd do it more often - but they should pay readers the courtesy of writing with some of the rigour, originality and respect for evidence that characterise their professional work. Nobody should find it surprising that internet service providers promising broadband speeds of "up to" eight megabits per second deliver average speeds of barely half that. The words "up to" are among the most pernicious in the language. Journalists inform us, for example, that "up to" 65,000 will die of swine flu. Travel companies promise "up to" 50 per cent off, and you'll get that if you go to Mumbai during the monsoon. Banks promise interest rates of "up to" 5.4 per cent on savings, which you will get if you give them £100,000 and say goodbye to it for five years. "Up to" means, literally, anything from zero to the figure stated, so if most people get more than four megabits per second, the internet providers are, after a fashion, delivering what they promised.

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I enjoyed the comparison, made by John Varley, chief executive of Barclays, between investment bankers, with their lavish bonuses, and football managers. Perhaps he doesn't follow the game closely but Varley should know that football managers get fired if their results fall below expectation. The equivalent of the government guarantee to Barclays that, if it fails, it will be bailed out by taxpayers would be a guarantee to Arsenal or Chelsea that, if they come bottom of the table (well, we can dream), they can stay in the Premiership and compete in Europe.

Peter Wilby was editor of the New Statesman from 1998-2005

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