What do you do with a woman who says that Gordon Brown has greatly raised taxes, that Tony Blair doesn't understand the countryside and behaves in a high-handed presidential manner? I would say, give her the job of Chief Political Correspondent at the BBC.

What is the Countess of Wessex supposed to have done wrong? She has said nothing worse about sundry people than many of us say every day. And why do these left-wing politicos and republican newspaper editors have nothing to say in condemnation of that guttersnipe of a journalist who tricked Sophie in the first place?

And what words are there to describe those newspapers which quoted the original report in which the Countess was supposed to have said Cherie Blair is "horrid" and William Hague is "a freak" - except she never said those things? Will the filthy tabloids now apologise? You know the answer to that as well as I do. There is something incurably rotten about the "red top" morning papers. Four years ago when Princess Diana was tragically killed, the gutter press milked the event to provoke the most virulent outbreak of sentimental mass hysteria the country has ever seen. But it was the gutter press itself which had contributed to Diana's death by so hounding her every footstep.

So, they said it wouldn't happen again, and they would behave themselves in future. Now we are witnessing the persecution of another young woman, and no one knows where it will lead to in the long run. The Countess can do no right: if, as a member of the Royal Family, she works for a living, she's in the wrong; if she gives up her job, she will be accused of living off the taxpayer. But it's not only the tabloids who are playing this story for far more than it's worth: there are prominent members of New Labour who are already using this episode to further their aim of "modernising" the monarchy as a prelude to destroying it.

It's obvious why New Labour hates the monarchy: it cannot abide the fact that it is not alone in wielding authority in the land. So the monarchy is deprecated as "undemocratic", whereas it is the most democratic institution we have got and we should be thankful for it. The Queen has no vote. She is not allowed to intervene in governmental or constitutional affairs. She does not merely represent the forty-odd per cent of the nation who voted for Tony Blair's party: she represents all the people.

We have been here before. In the 17th Century, the monarchy was abolished and the country was governed for eleven years by a puritanical, politically-correct dictatorship until the Cromwellian totalitarianism was shown up for what it was and we got our king back. The cries at the time of Cromwell were eerily similar to what we are hearing today: the need to "modernise" - think of the New Model Army - and so destroy the traditional institutions which had served the country well for centuries. Cromwell abolished parliament. Blair effectively does similarly by by-passing it at every opportunity.

The trouble with this Government is that it spends its time dismantling those aspects of our country which are of proven use while neglecting the tasks which it was elected to perform. It was elected on promises to improve the health service and the schools and Labour also made much of its "co-ordinated transport policy". The health service is no better, our schools have just been adjudged the worst among all the EU countries, and as for transport, many third world countries have a better system than ours. If Labour itches to "modernise" something, they should forget the monarchy and do something about the roads and the railways.

Published: Tuesday, April 10, 2001