THERE will be General Election this year, probably in May.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to classify your average British voter these days. As recently as a few years ago, the battle lines were well marked out with clearly defined ideological chalk.

Nowadays, people cherry-pick policies. The Tories are keen to present themselves as the party of liberty - or libertarian, at least - anxious to paint New Labour as a bunch of nasties constantly devising new ways of making our lives a misery.

In many ways, it is not a bad strategy to adopt. Labour's decision to introduce identity cards - backed by "civil penalties" levied at the whim of Home Office bureaucrats - is a disturbing development that needs watching.

Some of us recall that what was originally intended to be a voluntary/experimental idea is suddenly writ large in concrete.

It would seem that those who are prepared to swallow the Government's specious arguments for the introduction of identity cards have quickly forgotten that the biggest threat to individual freedom has always been, and remains, not terrorism but totalitarian government.

Even the party faithful must rapidly be tiring of their self-imposed omerta on this and any number of other repressive legislation enacted in their name.

Soundbite

Once, it was relatively simple to point at the Tories and accuse them of everything from fiscal folly to eating babies. Now we have a party called New Labour that cynically presents the soundbite as considered and reasoned logic.

There are other apparent contradictions concerning the great British voter. For example, a large majority of the public expects that taxes will rise if Labour wins the next election. This includes more than half of Labour voters.

A recent poll underlined the extent of opposition to further tax increases, but also the expectation of most voters that they will rise, whoever wins. Nevertheless, the dislike of further tax rises runs right across party lines.

Interestingly, Labour voters would prefer cuts in spending to higher taxes by 55 to 36 per cent.

There is no doubt that towards the end of Labour's second term, the honeymoon is not only well and truly over, but has decayed into a sterile marriage of dreariness, drudgery and indifference.

And there can now be hardly any innocent souls out there who cling to the sentimental notion that National Insurance contribution rises are anything other than an ill-concealed tax.

Then there's council tax, that other great example of institutionalised daylight robbery. This area of lucrative revenue-raising is to pay for the pensions of thousands of employees, from town hall clerks to the police.

The pensions crisis is also another sore point with Britain's wage slaves. Everyone's now under the cosh. For the state pension diminishes apace - thanks to the Tory reign of the 1980s - while private and occupational pensions seem to depend entirely on the vagaries of the markets. Not so in the case of our £56,000-a-year-plus-£130,000 expenses MPs, though.

They devise and vote in their own pensions, so that's all right. Not surprisingly, their final salary schemes are as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar and, strangely, tend to go up rather than down.

Perhaps if MPs - who are no more than our employees, after all - were subject to the same uncertainties faced by the rest of us, then their minds might be concentrated a bit more.

When was an MP last subjected to the justify-your-existence scrutiny that many others - such as teachers -must face on a daily basis?

Take a leaf out of Tuscany's book

SOME of the logic behind the Government's 24-hour drinking obsession can be traced to the hills of Tuscany.

Why? Because that's where some New Labour people like to go for their summer hols.

Many politicians dream of Britain adopting a caf-style society. They fondly imagine a family-friendly street scene where citizens can happily wander on a summer's evening.

Just like Tuscany...

No chance. Rainy, yob-strewn Blighty will never achieve this until family values make a return and some pubs lose their reputation for being the domain of aggressive young males.

We have much to learn from our neighbours across the Channel.