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I believe these are the correct positions for progressive politics in the modern era. But if others feel they’re not the right policies, and some clearly do, let us debate them openly and candidly.

Tony Blair, ‘No more coded critiques – let’s have an open debate on where we go next‘

This is not an abstract discussion. It is one which touches upon the preservation of the values and freedoms. I look forward to that debate with you.

John Reid, ‘Security, freedom and the protection of our values‘.

I believe it is time now to engage in a new and honest debate about integration and cohesion in the UK.

Ruth Kelly, launching the Commission on Integration and Cohesion.

I’ve asked this before, but where is the forum for these debates? What are the formal mechanisms? Can I join in? I’m not the only one to notice.

Would you do me a favour? Would you listen and look out in future for politicians calling for a “debate” on an issue? It’s sometimes an “honest debate” or an “open debate” or sometimes and “open and honest debate”.

All of that is fine. But what we often find in the radio game, is that when we telephone the said politicians and ask them to come on the air and debate the issues (in an open and/or honest way) they won’t engage with other politicians. This is not always the case, but very often. I wonder why?

Eddie Mair, PM

Reid drowned at birth the debate he said he was looking forward to having by saying opposition MPs, judges and commentators ‘just don’t get it’. He made it clear he wasn’t interested in a debate saying things he didn’t agree with. Someone should tell him a mind is like a pub – no good unless it’s open. Ruth Kelly has done much the same. After she announced…

Finally, there are questions about the debate itself. It will have considerably more value if we can be open and honest about the challenges we face. We must not be censored by political correctness, and we must not tiptoe around important issues.

…it was made clear that the issue of faith schools was off the agenda. This despite one of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion’s terms of reference being ‘suggesting how local community and political leadership can push further against perceived barriers to cohesion and integration’. Instead of breaking these barriers by abolishing faith schools and mixing their pupils, Kelly suggests back-of-a-napkin sideshows like ‘twinning’ schools and organising sporting events between schools.

Now, maybe inter-school rugby, football and hockey have fallen out of fashion in this era of non-competitive sporting activities, but as someone old enough to remember such spectacles I can tell you they were rarely bonding experiences where male teams were involved. They were often violent affairs where grudges, if not settled on the field of play, were finished afterwards out of sight of the teachers. The only black eye I ever received was from getting unwillingly caught up in the settling of an inter-school beef.

Sunny Hundal says, ‘[w]henever anyone asks for a “new and honest debate” on an issue, it should be obvious it is merely a euphemism to state they don’t know what to do about a supposed problem’. That has the depressing ring of truth about it but on faith schools Kelly is putting very pertinent matters on the top shelf despite all her talk of being ‘open’, ‘honest’ and refusing to ‘tiptoe around important issues’. She’s seems to know what she’s doing about that supposed problem. She’s giving with one hand while with taking with the other. Her opponents (for want of a better word) only get to use one hand because the other is tied behind their backs.

Let’s hope this exercise is nothing like the last one asked to investigate establishing stronger ‘community cohesion’. Of the 64 recommendations to come out of the task force appointed after the 7/7 bombings, next to nothing was put into play. Looking at the make-up of the Commission, it’s made up of the usual kinds of suspects you’d expect to be plucked from the cultural and political elites. No room for any of the proles living on the front line. They’re to be consulted in ‘a significant programme of consultation and public meetings and events’. ‘Dates of further consultations will be posted on the Commission’s website’ but if the site is currently up and running, they’re not doing a very good job of publicising it. I can’t find it. And, after all this, any recommendations to come out of the Commission, if they’re fortunate to meet with Government approval ‘will cover England only’.

To repeat, faith schools won’t be part of the recommendations as they are something of a totemic issue for New Labour. They apparently give parents that magical maguffin, ‘choice’, though where the choice for athiest parents when even non-denominational schools have a religious element (including morning prayers) isn’t spelt out. If all these Gods, faiths and creeds are so strong, why do they need reinforcement outside the home and place of worship anyway? It’s publicly subsidised worship, nothing less.

It seems common sense to suggest that abolishing faith schools would instantly improve ‘community cohesion’ or whatever focus-grouped to within an inch of its life term you want to give to people getting along a bit better. It would mean both children and parents from varied backgrounds being thrown together. The children spend six hours a day, five days a week together and the parents (as with monotheistic schools now, obviously) start with the small talk and tea and progress to inviting each other round for dinner and building lasting friendships. The partners get involved as do each families circle of friends. Let’s face it, there’s nothing like the blessed relief of finally escaping the house after five years of children’s TV, nappies and tantrums to get people talking to each other and revelling in adult company. It’s a statement of the bleedin’ obvious probably made countless times before.

But no, Ruth ‘Opus Dei’ Kelly and Tony ‘I’m prepared to meet my maker’ Blair have very personal interests in the entrenchment of religion (Tony clearly thinks he needs all the goodwill he can summon if he’s to avoid a rather warmer afterlife). There certainly seems to be some ineffable prestige in letting fundamentalists run schools.

A simple and easy, and possibly the greatest, solution to the problems of community (how I’m coming to hate that word) integration is there for the taking. From next year all schools should have a legally enforceable, non-discriminatory admissions policy.

This denial of the apartheid of faith schools brings to mind the ‘joke’ as told by Jim Davidson or some similar 70s throwback about the school bus full of black, white and asian kids who are all arguing and fighting. ‘Right,’ says the driver, ‘from now on none of you are black or white or brown, you’re all green…”

‘Now, light greens at the front, dark greens at the back.’