While no one should feel guilty about staying at home the best way of registering an abstention is ­ paradoxically

While no one should feel guilty about staying at home, the best way of registering an abstention is ­ paradoxically ­ to make the effort to go out and vote Liberal Democrat.It will annoy Mr Hague and may do something to cramp Mr Blair’s increasingly irritating style. It may not be as picturesque as pulling your jumper over your head, which is what one of the assembled schoolgirls did when confronted by an example of that style last week. But it will be more effective, certainly more so than staying at home in front of the television. I do not, however, think it is going to happen, not at any rate on any substantial scale.When I hear people predicting the end of the Tories, I remember an article Lord Skidelsky wrote in The Spectator in the 1980s. Labour, he said, was finished; would never, ever form another government. A few years later most people expected Mr Neil Kinnock to form one; five years afterwards Mr Blair actually did form one.

Lord Skidelsky and those who thought as he did could reply today that this Labour government could not have come about unless the party had turned itself ­ unless Mr Blair and his young ladies and gentlemen had turned it ­ into a different party entirely.Likewise it may be that by 2006 or whenever the Conservatives will be different. But the chances do not look promising, irrespective of whether they are led by Mr Hague, Mr Michael Portillo or anyone else.Oddly, the party’s happiest opportunity of uniting lies in Europe. Mr Blair has now promised a referendum on the euro within two years of beginning that famous second term of his, though he made an equally firm commitment to a referendum on the electoral system in his first term. If the vote went against the Government, most Tories would be delighted and would happily unite behind the will of the people If the vote went for the euro they would be less pleased. But at least the question would have been put out of the way.About this second term, incidentally, we all know what is meant: that if Mr Blair wins a majority, he will be the only Labour Prime Minister to serve two successive full terms.

This assumes that the 2001 parliament will run its full course, which is a big assumption to make.In 1950 C R Attlee won a second term with a majority of five At the time this was considered impossibly low. All kinds of impudent schemes emanated from the Palace for the formation of a coalition government. But Attlee could have carried on perfectly well if he had not been discouraged by the deaths and serious illnesses of his senior ministers and encouraged by George VI to go to the country in October 1951, before the King had embarked on his Commonwealth tour (which was never to take place).In October 1974 Harold Wilson won with a majority of only three, having governed for the previous seven months without a majority of any kind This new-found majority soon disappeared too. But Wilson and, later, James Callaghan nevertheless governed for over four-and-a-half years.

In 1966 Wilson had won a full second term, having previously governed for a year-and-a-half with a majority of four.In the enthusiasm for a Blair victory, there is perhaps a danger of neglecting the electoral achievements of two of his predecessors: Attlee, whose name is still occasionally mentioned at gatherings of the party faithful, and Wilson, whose picture (to use one of his own favourite metaphors) has long been turned to the wall. Mr Blair’s second term seems as assured as ever, though he did not enjoy a specially good week. His worst moment came not when the heroic girl pulled her jumper over her head but when, at the final Prime Minister’s Questions, the Conservative MP asked him about his friendly correspondence with a Hinduja brother which he had chosen not to disclose to the Hammond inquiry. The Prime Minister replied that all relevant information should be supplied to the appropriate authority. This, curiously, was precisely the response which Mr John Major used to make in the 1990s when he was confronted by the deeds of various ministerial and backbench miscreants.