MR Prescott - alias the Stanley Unwin Professor of Gobbledegook - wants new country houses to be built in "innovative designs".

He issued a statement last week through the planning minister saying, "Not only do we hope that cutting edge designs for country houses will raise the standards of rural housing generally; we also expect them to leave a legacy from today's top architects for the history books of the future. These new houses will become, like Blenheim, major visitor attractions in 100 years time".

Whom does he think he's kidding? Most building constructed today will be falling down in 30 years time. I have personal experience of this. When we came to live in the City of London six years ago, we endured six months of pile-driving followed by a further six months of steel-erecting right outside our front door, as the builders constructed the new Merrill Lynch offices - a huge structure featuring the largest trading floor in Europe. As a sort of consolation for all the noise, dirt and disturbance, my wife and I were invited to the champagne opening on the roof. There we were told that, smart as the new building appeared, it would have to be replaced within a generation. Modern architecture is simply not meant to last.

Most of modern architecture is ugly, pretentious and above all out of place. If you visit London, look me up and I'll take you on a walk down the south bank of the Thames from Blackfriars to Tower Bridge. As you look across the river you will see a row of contemporary buildings ugly enough to turn you to stone. What's worse is that these monstrosities are so huge they conceal the truly beautiful buildings of old London. The crassest example of this is that St Paul's itself - the great emblem and jewel of the City - is obscured by rubbish that has been built out of concrete and Meccano. Other new buildings merely scream at you the fatuity and babyishness of the modern architectural mind.

One quality shared by modern architects is arrogance. We were invited to the new Lloyds building for a talk by its creator Richard Rogers. This is the building with its innards on the outside. If it were a human being, you'd judge that it had suffered abdominal surgery gone wrong. Inside, the ceilings are all black, which must cheer the brokers up no end. Rogers talked completely incoherently and when he was asked questions didn't answer them but rudely continued his self-advertising spiel. Also most modern architects construct angular ugliness for ordinary folks' houses - remember Le Corbusier who said that "a house is a machine for living in" - and then take themselves off to inhabit a classical villa or chateau in rural France.

But the worst of Prescott's diktat is his presumption to tell us the shape and form of our dwellings. What has it got to do with him? Is the country to be modelled according to the aesthetic taste of John Prescott? God help the country. Prescott is to beauty what the punk rocker is to madrigals. Well, what did you expect from New Labour, whose project is to dictate to us - usually in a series of five year plans, just like the old Soviet Union - how we shall live our lives from the cradle to the grave. It is a feature of all totalitarian governments to preach freedom, glorious freedom, and then to add, "But of course you must do as the State says".

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange