He observed that despite all the highly public ‘disagreements’ and arguments between the Tory ‘opposition’ (I use this term very loosely) and the Labour Government over the number of helicopters in service or the appointment of Sir Richard Dannatt as a political adviser, the two parties have practically identical policies on Afghanistan.

And it is true. The Conservatives, on this issue among so many others, have very little to say about Afghanistan or Iraq that radically differs from what is currently on offer. Both parties, save an honourable few among their ranks, enthusiastically endorsed the war by voting for it. Neither has altered their stance since.

Eight years later, some among those many who voted for the war are beginning to reconsider their position. Many more already have. After nearly a decade we have had ample time to survey the scene, to agonise over the many needless deaths and to debate the ins and outs of why we are still there. Indeed, The Times notes that opinion continues to swing towards withdrawal.

One must have concluded by now, as many did long before the invasion, that it was a bad idea to invade Afghanistan in the first place. Many have tried before and all have failed. The war was borne out of opportunity and mistaken idealism that imposing democracy was a simple matter rather than a process that takes time, experience and many generations.

Our presence in Afghanistan, like Iraq, does us no favours. It is high time that we left; high time that we got out of Afghanistan.

Mr Purnell called for the resignation of Gordon Brown as Labour Party leader and Prime Minister and for an immediate election contest to replace him. Yet, like so many other Labour rebels who have taken to the airwaves in recent days, Mr Purnell did not cite a disagreement with the policies of Mr Brown.

It is the case that Mr Purnell and all the other Labour rebels do not actually have any problems with the current policies of the Labour Party. They merely disagree with the way in which they are being presented and the negative light that the media now continually cast upon Gordon Brown and the Labour Party.

Thus, this is not an issue of policy but personality and rather blatant careerism. Sky News claimed tonight that in resigning Mr Purnell sacrificed his career on principle. Rubbish. James Purnell had only his career in mind and believes that, by ditching Brown, he could further it. Similarly, to which principles exactly was he adhering? Certainly not those of policy or ideology.

Furthermore, if you honestly think that a UK General Election will change anything other than the personalities of those MPs in Westminster and Whitehall then you are sadly mistaken. Mr Cameron and the Conservatives seek to continue the policies and political direction of the current Government with only very minor alterations. If you do not believe this to be true then please prove my assertion to be incorrect with cold hard evidence. If you cannot then you must accept that I am right.

It does not matter whether or not Gordon Brown is replaced as Prime Minister by another Labour leader or by the Conservative Party and David Cameron; the governance and policies in Westminster will remain identical for the foreseeable future, as they have done for the past two decades. Nothing will change.

As always our ever so thoughtful and enlightened Prime Minister, Gordon Brown was quick to make a public statement in which he claimed that:

Benazir Bhutto was a woman of immense personal courage and bravery.

Knowing, as she did, the threats to her life, the previous attempt at assassination, she risked everything in her attempt to win democracy in Pakistan, and she has been assassinated by cowards afraid of democracy.

This is a sad day for democracy. It’s a tragic hour for Pakistan.

Unfortunately these words were uttered by a man who refuses to give the British people a referendum on the completely undemocratic EU Constitution (a promise on which he was elected) and continues to give away further sovereign powers to an unelected, bureaucratic EU Commission. The Prime Minister wouldn’t know what democracy was if it came up to him and punched him in the face.

Anyway, be that as it may; returning to the original point about Benazir Bhutto’s death, I will not pretend to know much about internal Pakistani politics, because I in fact know very little. However, what I do know is that the country has an enormous problem with Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. This has also had a profound affect on neighbouring Afghanistan and on our troops stationed in that region already undertaking the extremely difficult task of trying to restore relative order and stability.

At present the military under President Musharraf are generally in control of Pakistan. Despite the efforts of some, including Benazir Bhutto, democracy has not yet been restored. Yet her murder is likely to accelerate international calls for elections to be held immediately and for the military dictatorship to be cast aside. Yet, perceptively Richard North notes that:

Arguably, democracy is the only means by which good government can be assured over the longer term – but, as we know to our cost in this country, even this is not a guarantee. Winston Churchill described it as the ‘least worst’ form of government, but this was a man who, during the Second World War, effectively ruled as a dictator.

Certainly, during that period, no one could sensibly have described the UK as a democracy, the normal rights of the citizens – and even elections – having been suspended. However, arguably, we had tolerably good government and certainly one which had the general consent of the majority of people.

It is worth asking, therefore, whether we should be pressing for immediate elections in Pakistan.

One wonders whether increased international pressure that will undoubtedly be placed upon Pakistan to make a rapid transition back to democracy may have unintended and unforeseen consequences. At a time when Pakistan appears to be a country in turmoil, it is perhaps unwise for outsiders to make rash decisions and appeal for something which they do not necessarily understand.

Rather unfortunately for us though, our fanatically europhile Foreign Secretary David Miliband will travel to Lisbon in the Prime Minister’s stead and put pen to paper as the United Kingdom’s official ‘representative’.

Once again it really does come as little surprise that the media as a collective entity have successfully managed to reduce the incredibly important issue of how our nation is to be governed and by whom, to one of petty, meaningless personalities and theatrical acts of no significance.

Whether or not Gordon Brown signs the treaty document at the official time and place is almost completely irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that he will be signing the EU Constitution eventually, without ever consulting the British people as he and his Labour party promised, and in doing so condemning us to yet further unjust and undemocratic rule from the unelected bureaucrats and politicians in Brussels.

As I have pointed out before, this will be very bad for all of us. Well, except for the politicians of course.

Yet, without wishing to dwell for particularly long on what has become a media soap-opera issue, I believe it is worth briefly reflecting upon the underlying consequences that this week’s events will undoubtedly have for us all.

Now, it seems quite clear that within the past few days, Gordon Brown and the Labour party have been attempting to switch the focus of media scrutiny from their recent illegal misdoings to that of party funding. The decision by the Prime Minister to discuss political ‘transparency’ strikes me as that of a man desperately trying to make the most out of a bad situation – but then really this is as much as to be expected.

As it stands, the Conservative party currently desires to break the longstanding link between the Trade Unions and the Labour party, while conversely Labour wishes to remove wealthy Conservative party donors including Michael Ashcroft and Irvine Laidlaw from the marginal seat equation.

Yet, while solutions to the supposedly urgent problem of illegal donations that were previously touted included a cap on individual donations and electoral spending limits, in shifting the media spotlight from solely his party to that of how all parties are funded, Gordon Brown has once again allowed the old idea of public funding for political parties to rear its head.

Inside the Westminster bubble the idea of asking, or rather as it would be, forcing the taxpayer to fund political parties has become an extremely popular option. Conveniently it represents a perfect opportunity for the careerist political classes that increasingly infest Parliament to further their stranglehold grip on the machinery of power, while wasting yet more of our money for their own ends – both of which are very much to our determent.

In an age when political participation is declining (for many varying reasons) along with membership and support of political parties rapidly falling, public funding would help prop up otherwise failing organisations that may have collapsed under their own weight and incompetence if left to their own devices and the erosion of time. Moreover, the desire by many politicians to have their parties subsidised has meant that they are effectively admitting that because they cannot be trusted to act within the laws they themselves created, the tax payer must bear the cost of their sins as a means to prevent them from committing further acts of illegally in future.

Unfortunately, this kind of reasoning is not unique to the ideas behind party funding, but pervades much of metropolitan liberal thought, especially on issues such as the consumption of illegal drugs – a subject on which I will probably go on to explore in a further post tomorrow.

However, it is worth remembering that public funding of political parties was created by politicians and party lackeys with little connection to reality or the people they are meant to represent. In short it is a solution that is good for them, not good for us, and should be opposed at every opportunity.

Personally I thought that Mr Brown would call an early election. If I was him, I would have wanted to secure a mandate to do things differently to the previous manifesto I had been elected under.

However, that said, I am not Gordon Brown, and since he will not be doing anything substantially different to his predecessor Tony Blair (just trying desperately to appear different,) and it’s not as though he’s sticking that closely to the current Labour manifesto anyway by refusing to hold a Referendum on the EU Constitution – it therefore can be assumed he probably does not need a new mandate after all.

Today, Gordon Brown claimed that even if he had chosen to call an early election, he would have won it. While he is probably right of course, in his assumption there is an underlying arrogance – believing and naturally assuming that he and his party would win. But then, as has been pointed out many times before, the underlying electoral system favours Labour maintaining power, and there is very little sign of that irregularity changing any time in the foreseeable future.

It does however seem extremely dubious that just the day after two opinions polls were released in national papers showing the Conservatives neck and neck with, or ahead of Labour, Gordon Brown announces that he wishes to give the British people a chance to experience his ‘vision’ for the country and cancels out an early poll. Coincidence? I think not.

What this does mean for the future then? Well, firstly and perhaps most importantly, there will be no election and therefore no representative test of public opinion over the issue of the EU Constitution. It looks increasingly likely that Gordon Brown will deny the British people the Referendum his party’s manifesto promised, and therefore it will most likely be forced through Parliament without popular support.

Secondly, we will have to endure at least another two, if not three years of Labour incompetence and deceit – possibly even longer if the Conservatives temporary unity fractures as most likely it will. Much fuss has unfortunately been made over a completely non-event.

Money and donations are rapidly flooding the Labour party’s coffers, which leaves me in little doubt that, if necessary, Gordon Brown would have no trouble in financing an election campaign within the next year.

The Conservative party and David Cameron have underestimated Gordon Brown for some time now, previously attempting to portray him as an ‘analogue Chancellor in a digital age’. Many of them seem to have forgotten that Gordon Brown was just as much the architect of New Labour as Tony Blair. He knows the ways of spin and manipulating the press who are currently content to feed from his hand as they have done for the past ten years.

We know that Gordon Brown is at heart left-wing and socialist. However, in the politics of today, perception is often at times as much as reality. Ever since he became Labour leader (and probably even before then) Brown has sought to dispel these doubt in the minds of the middle class electorate, which is where the next election will be won and lost.

Brown has begun to cloak himself in what could initially be perceived as centrist and centre-right style policies in attempt to sure up Labour’s previously flagging middle class voters which deserted them when Blair was in power. If Brown calls an election in the spring, and announces he will bring the troops back from Iraq, the Left will once again flock to Labour’s banner and David Cameron’s Conservatives will certainly be in for a tough time.

The Conservative leadership need to make a choice very soon. They need to decide whether they wish to carry on as they are currently, struggling to make head way in by-elections, the opinion polls and bickering among one another over small differences, or alternatively, whether they could set out a new vision for Britain, that would sweep away many of the mistakes Labour have made for the past ten years and in doing so really appeal to the British electorate’s current desire for a change of Government that will do things differently.

Despite Flash Gordon to the rescue; returning from his holiday on the south coast of England, it would appear that he and the Labour Government have still not fully learnt from the catastrophic mistakes they made six years ago.

The livestock culled in this month’s first outbreak were taken all the way to an incinerator near Yeovil, which was surely an unnecessary risk that could have led to spreading the disease. What’s more, so I’m told, the Government has not yet closed local footpaths in the outbreak area, so walkers could possibly spread the infection more widely if not careful.

That said, these are still early days, and I hope for the sake of the rural and farming communities across the country that the relatively swift action taken will prevent the returning sight of burning pyres throughout Britain.

If not, and the outbreak is eventually traced back to either the government laboratory, or the private company licensed by the government, then there will surely be hell to pay.