The spirit of Basil Sybil and Manuel lives on it would seem

The spirit of Basil, Sybil and Manuel lives on, it would seem. British hotels need to refurbish, redecorate and train staff rather than relying on poorly paid students with no interest in the job, according to the Consumers’ Association The stakes are high. A £40m “Only in Britain Only in 2002″ campaign to promote tourism will be wasted unless our hotels give visitors a better experience, says the association. In one case, a hotel kept its breakfast room locked until one minute before the food was served, keeping the guests “hanging about outside like wolves before feeding time”. There are no vacancies for the surly in the Consumers’ Association’s brave new B&B.. The results of the first round of Serbia’s presidential election have produced two achievements and a warning.

The first achievement is that the election was held at all and that, in the judgement of official observers, it conformed largely to international standards. – no mean feat in a region so recently riven by conflict. Their rivalry reflects the collapse of the reform coalition that toppled Slobodan Milosevic, but it also gives Serbia’s voters a genuine choice on 13 October between Western-style economic reform and a more gradual, nationally orientated programme.The warning is contained in the unexpectedly strong showing by the out-and-out nationalist candidate, Vojislav Seselj. Mr Seselj – who received the backing of Mr Milosevic from his cell at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague – came third, with more than 20 per cent of the vote. And while two in three Serbian voters supported the two main democratic candidates, two in three also supported candidates of a more nationalist stamp.Many of those who supported Mr Seselj are now expected to vote for Mr Kostunica in two weeks’ time, ensuring his victory.

Mr Kostunica campaigned not only for slower reform than the Serbian government has been attempting, but against bowing to “diktat” from the West. His election would trigger a potentially damaging conflict with the pro-Western prime minister of Serbia, Zoran Djindjic – a conflict that would only be exacerbated by Mr Djindjic’s backing for the presidential candidacy of Mr Labus.The warning is thus not only that the struggle for market-oriented reform in Serbia is likely to become sharper before it is resolved, slowing much-needed progress, but that the nationalist sentiment to which Mr Milosevic appealed with such destructive effect still has plenty of adherents. Mr Milosevic has been overthrown and put on trial, but Serbia has not yet vanquished the forces from which he derived his power.. The history of the Labour Party’s policy on Europe is littered with missed opportunities and wrong policies. Clement Attlee’s Labour government failed to ensure Britain was one of the founding fathers as the new Europe emerged from the ashes of war. We stuck our heads in the sand under Hugh Gaitskell and allowed Macmillan to miss out at Messina on the Treaty of Rome in 1957.

But we’d missed the boat and he led his MPs into voting against the Tories in 1971. For the next 10 years, Eurosceptic rhetoric dominated Labour, until Neil Kinnock, John Smith and Tony Blair gave consistent pro-European leadership – all the time opposed by Labour’s left.Like most people, I’m not fanatically pro- or anti-euro For me, it’s a practical issue about Britain’s interests. Gordon Brown’s economic assessment of the conditions for joining the euro will be rigorous and hard-headed Rightly so. Entry should be recommended only if the five tests are met.So why are some trade unions now opposing the euro even before that assessment is made? And why on earth should the Labour left want to line up in the “no” campaign alongside the anti-Labour hard left, Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit?Instead we should unite to shape a European Union committed to full employment, social justice and equal rights. A dynamic Europe based upon competitive enterprises with high-quality skills and technology, and underpinned by the stability of the euro.The left has a great opportunity to engage in shaping a modern vision for Europe. My question to others on this left is: whose side are you really on?.