OUT of all the current bad news for New Labour has come what the party leadership must regard as very good news.

An opinion poll taken in the wake of the peerages-for-cash scandal reveals that 73 per cent of voters believe that New Labour is now at least as sleazy as the Tories under John Major. Discounting don't knows, an impressive 20 per cent, a fifth of voters, believe that New Labour is less sleazy than the Major Tories.

This result must exceed New Labour's wildest expectations. It certainly leaves me dumbfounded. Clearly it is going to take something rather special to achieve the figure of 100 per cent convinced of New Labour's absolute pre-eminence in sleaze. But Tony & Co surely can do it.

Of course there are other vital tasks. The vestige or two of democracy that remain must be demolished. So a warm welcome, please, for the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, an obscure measure that will castrate Parliament. Ministers will gain almost untrammelled power to amend, repeal or replace legislation without consulting Parliament - tedious at best, at worst damn troublesome.

At local level, democracy is being stifled through a Code of Conduct introduced by John Prescott in 2001. Superficially, the ban it imposes on councillors speaking on matters on which they are deemed to have a "personal and/or prejudicial interest" is fair enough. But it is being used to prevent councillors speaking, and sometimes even attending debates, on issues on which they have already expressed a view - which is said to make them "prejudiced".

Monitoring officers police this Orwellian suppression, which is impeding councillors from representing those who elected them. For if a councillor backs residents over, say, a phone mast or a housing scheme, he is said not to be impartial, and excluded from the debates and vote.

The Government is supposedly concerned about low turnout at local elections. The turnout will be even lower when citizens realise that whoever they elect is virtually gagged on the matters of most immediate interest. This is the very antithesis of the vigorous exchange of views that should be the heart and soul of democracy.

Do foxhunters still want to repeal the ban? If so, why?

Here's Otis Ferry, the much-feted pro-hunt protestor, who earned a mild rebuke for storming the House of Commons in what could have been interpreted as a terrorist attack, with appalling consequences: "The hunt has gone from strength to strength since the hunting ban. If it hadn't been for the ban hunting would probably have faded away."

Since the hunting fraternity argued that hunting was the central plank of all rural life, rural communities have the anti-hunters, and their ban, to thank for saving them. Ferry's remarks come in an article about Shropshire, where he hunts. It is deeply sad.

"Shropshire to me is solely about hunting," he says. Well, my wife and I once had a holiday in Shropshire, discovering with delight Clun, Bishop's Castle, Ludlow, the Stiperstones, the Long Mynd and other Shropshire gems. We did our bit for the Shropshire economy, even bringing home from the village shop two large boxes of local bilberries - coals to Newcastle. The thought of killing anything never crossed our minds.