A National Treasure

Birkenhead is one of the very few seats where anyone should bother voting at all in a General Election next month. Frank Field is a national treasure, and proof that you don't have to come from an extreme position to be an original political thinker.

He is also one of the most striking examples of just how badly the Old Labour right wing (if you want to call it that - you know what I mean) has done under New Labour, a carve-up between those who had cleared off to the SDP and those who had been Communists, Trotskyists or fellow-travellers at that time.

Now we even have two Ministers in all but name and salary who are taking the Tory Whip, and one who is taking the Lib Dem Whip; one of the former spent Labour's battle years running the Federation of Conservative Students and being Secretary of the Race and Repatriation Committee of the Monday Club! (What are Labour candidates' leaflets in this threesome's constituencies going to say, and why?)

Meanwhile, Frank Field, who long ago resigned from the old Young Conservatives in opposition to apartheid, is writing op-ed pieces for the Daily Telegraph and that's about it.

When the new party comes, as it surely must and certainly will, then I for one hope that Frank Field, among others one could name, does us the honour of joining it.