Mr Blair has changed his mind and then apparently changed his mind again on the popular appeal of banning fox-hunting. It may do wonders for his core supporters, but it does precious little for average voters who are worried about the education of their children, the care of their old age, their transport to work and their treatment when they get ill.On these issues the Labour Government continues to score well, far better indeed than any of its predecessors at this stage of the electoral cycle But it is not invulnerable. But the basic point that Mr Hague needs to absorb is that anti-Europeanism is not enough to take him back into the middle ground of British politics. Why? There are no doubt all sorts of psephological reasons for justifying the Tory performance, from the nature of by-elections to the peculiarities of this constituency, which is so clearly divided between town and country.

To have built on their European electoral success they needed to prove that they could have kept up the momentum to extend their vote from their core voters to the middle-class citizens who deserted them in such droves in the last election.They failed. The British parliamentary system may be one in which the winner takes all. But is also one in which the realisation of expectations is as important as the result itself On that score, the Tories did not do nearly well enough. The Prime Minister had to pour in everything, including visits by himself and half his Cabinet, as well as dropping hints on delaying the euro referendum beyond the next Parliament, to make sure that his party didn’t suffer the humiliation of the European elections only a month and a half ago.
But avoid that humiliation he did. The only survival, the only meaning.The writer is a BBC special correspondent. EVERYONE CAN claim credit for the by-election at Eddisbury: the Tories for winning it, Labour for not losing it too badly and the Lib Dems for holding their share of the vote.

In reality it is William Hague who has most to ponder on, even if Tony Blair has little to congratulate himself for. Thea and I were back in London, and Lauren had moved to New York – where one day last week she headed for an airport in New Jersey, to take a fateful flight with her sister and brother-in-law.The bridge, as Thornton Wilder said, is love. For two years she held on to it, and then sent it back via Thea We were all living different lives by then. I quoted some lines from his wife Nadia’s last letter to him in which she asks, with terrible, simple urgency: “Where are you?”Lauren borrowed the book from which I had quoted.

It was a pleasure to argue with her.Once, I brought her round to my way of thinking. It was Thea’s farewell to Hong Kong party, and we all ended up in a bar. At two in the morning, after another human rights argument, I ended up telling Lauren about the Russian poet, Osip Mandelstam, who died in Siberia after being banished to the camps by Stalin. I didn’t believe they were things people should be forced to wait for.

But Lauren was always sincere, and she had the gift of a formidable intellect. She was a pragmatist, and believed that human rights would come with economic prosperity. I may be completely wrong, but I always sensed a loneliness in Lauren. The tough exterior, the power-woman who excelled in the witty verbal put-down, was covering up a much more vulnerable person.