Responses to readers

Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday

Some correspondents don't seem to have grasped that I have abandoned my call for 'None of the Above'. Instead, I urge you not to vote for the Tories. I have explained why at length elsewhere, and those wanting details can look them up on the blog archive.

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Anyone who thinks this means I support Labour needs his head examined. I also urge people to boycott the BNP, which one contributor maintains -ridiculously - is not a racialist party. Oh yes it is. Its constitution specifically excludes certain people from membership, on a blatantly racial basis this is one of the many reasons why I despise the BNP, and why anyone who tells you that I sympathise with it (as I have seen claimed on some sites) is lying.

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I was criticised the other week for having dinner with opponents after a debate. The suggestion was made that this was in some way a betrayal of principles. Why should that be? I have never urged anyone to shun democratic opponents. Why should I? It is they who tend to shun me. Charles Clarke, in the Green Room before 'Question Time ' last week, declined to shake my hand and wouldn't speak to me directly. I took this as a compliment.

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The DYNO-POD joke is criticised because of its mention of Lesbianism. Wouldn't it have been just as funny, asks a reader, without the Lesbian in it? I don't know, but it would have lost a large part of its meaning, which was an attack on the Tory Party's dogged pursuit of politically correct causes, which is a fact. I'll bet that short parable was remembered by almost everyone at the debate, while more complex points trickled out of their memories in minutes. That's the point of parables. In any case, I simply cannot see why a lesbian, listening to the joke, should be upset by it. Believe me, if the Tory Party (and so many others) didn't go on about this subject so much, nor would I.

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Charles Clarke gets angry with the liberals

Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday

For some years now I have been warning that the current government is a threat to liberty, while also having no idea how to deal with crime and disorder.

I have done a lot of detailed work on this - in fact I wrote a book about it - and I like to think that my criticisms have been knowledgeable, measured and responsible.

During all that time I haven't received a single e-mail from Princess Tony, who has begun bombarding liberal columnists with his views on this subject. Nor have I been attacked in speeches by Mr Charles Clarke, the Commissar for Internal Affairs and State Security (or 'Home Secretary' as he was called before we went metric).

I suspect this is because ministers rightly reckon that I hold them in complete contempt, and reckon it would be a waste of time trying to win me round or convince me of their (non-existent) good intentions in this area. But there's another point here. This government cares much more about attacks on it from the liberal left than it does about assaults from the right. It is clearly badly stung.

Had these liberals bothered to sound the alarm - about Identity Cards in particular, but about liberty in general - a lot sooner, they might actually have prevented a lot of this nasty legislation from going through. If a Tory government had done a quarter of what Labour has done, the Guardian, the Observer and the Independent would have denounced it as 'Fascist'.

So, welcome to the campaign for liberty, you leftists, but recognise that you had the power to do good and didn't use it, that you were lazy and complacent for far too long - and that it was left to people such as me to make the case while you were looking the other way.

Dumbing down doesn't suit you Charles

Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday

The Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, is distinguished in the present government by actually being rather an intelligent man. What beats me is why he puts up with the stupid task he has been given, of ramming the horrible plan for Identity Cards through Parliament. On Monday night he had to endure gales of mirth as he pretended that the scheme was voluntary - when in fact all those who apply for passports will shortly be forced to place details of their eyeballs and fingerprints and personal details on the government's sinister new 1984 Big Brother register. Of course, if they decide never to go abroad again, then they won’t need to. If Mr Clarke thinks this is 'voluntary' then perhaps he should set an example by promising not to renew his own passport and stay at home for the rest of his life.

There are ministers in the Home Office so idiotic that they could convincingly pretend to believe in this rubbish. Mr Clarke is not one of them. This is what ambition has reduced him to.