The objection of substance to this position is that, in the hands of those who actually believe it, as Mr Lane has shown at the Race Relations Board,… - Maurice Cowling

In the attack on the euro, the Conservative party has discovered what looks like a principle which may well have a snowball effect in shaking the moral invulnerability that has been Mr Blair's strongest card since 1997. Nor is it only the euro which may have this effect. No one any longer believes the government's assurances about hospital waiting-lists; everyone understands that taxation, especially on motorists, is too high; and there is a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the government's devotion to reverse discrimination and the Macpherson Report.

Moral tolerance has not been a dominant feature of Conservative thinking in the past and, however desirable, is unlikely to become one of its dominant features, or indeed a dominant feature of the thinking of Labour voters so long as the gay and lesbian lobbies remain rancid and militant. Aspiration and choice, on the other hand, are qualities which every Conservative leader since Baldwin has applauded without embarrassment or affectation and the Conservative instinct for "social cohesion" has been as central as the search for a new prosperity and "new opportunities for millions of people" in the last 18 years.

As to Solzhenitsyn it is necessary to remark that there is every reason to avoid involvement. He is a Russian, bearing on himself the marks of the Russian experience. There is no common ground between him and us or between his experience and ours. We know well enough without him that the Soviet Union may be dangerous, but we ought also to know that the reason why we should fear her is not the illiberality of her regime but any danger that may arise from her expansion. We know, too, that the Labour party is not Bolshevism, that at its worst it is East German socialism.