Local Heroes

The difference in being involved in local politics in Highbury is that the people you argue with over parking and dog-fouling turn up the next morning on the Today programme discussing Iraq or, worse, modern political culture.

This morning, Mark Easton, home affairs editor at the BBC, came on to discuss a survey showing the surprising popularity of the Iraq intervention among the English middle classes. Some two-thirds of the electorate supported the intervention when it looked like it was going to be an easy victory. A third continue to do so now. I am not sure why anyone is surprised at this. In a list of the electorate's top political priorities, gathered in the same survey, Iraq does not feature.

It would feature in my list - I would like to think that it is the end of the culture of sanctions. This cruel instrument starves and crushes the innocent and the vulnerable, making them easier prey for tyrannical regimes, but which have the undoubted advantage that they are poor television.

The last time I came across Mark was to photograph him on the school run in a campaign to stop rich parents trucking their children 100 yards to school under the ludicrous excuse that they are too 'busy' to walk. The other argument is that the roads are not safe - not least due to over-frenetic parents trucking their children 100 yards to school. I won't mention the o-word. All right then - obesity.

Next up was Peter Oborne, discussing the mendacity that is apparently become endemic in modern political culture with Steve Richards, the Independent columnist. They are a lively pair of self-publicists, capable of a decent and heated discussion about nothing at all.

Peter is not above local politics. Like Mark, he prefers to drive his children about in his car, even if only as a political statement - he once made a documentary for Channel 4 on this important human right. On another occasion, when I told him his local newsagent, Harendra Bhatt, was threatened by planning approval for a Tesco to open 20 yards from his kiosk, the story was soon in the Evening Standard. Peter's wife, Martine, was a Conservative candidate in the local elections last May. One of her fellow candidates, Dave Barnes, a rather notorious character in Highbury politics, cheerfully told me that her contribution to the campaign had been to hold a dinner party. Their house is palatial - though I have never personally been invited in. I could imagine however that a dinner party chez Oborne could easily involve up to 15 voters.