So, Labour Conference over, and I hope you enjoyed looking at Jonathon Roberts's blog.

Another Parliament week over too, so I only saw Tony Blair's speech on TV from Strasbourg - but what a performance!

Yesterday, I was interviewed by the "p.m." programme on BBC Radio 4, on what I thought of the absence of much debate on Europe at the Conference, something Commissioner Wallstrom had commented on in her blog. Questions soon centered on Gordon Brown's speech - a very good speech, but with no mention of Europe.

Even when he said he was proud to be Scottish and British, he didn't add "and European", which would have been particularly appropriate the day after Europe's Ryder Cup triumph in a sport that was invented, after all, in Scotland!

Does he want to keep quiet on his European policy? Or does he think it not important? Or is he still pondering on it? Who knows. It certainly contrasted with the view of one of his closest confidents, Ed Balls, who in a fringe meeting said Britain's constructive engagement with the rest of Europe was the most important issue facing us over the next decade.

David Milliband too was a powerful advocate of acting at European level - not surprising as he is minister for an issue on which national action alone is less useful, namely the environment. He said that, in peoples minds, the letters "EU" should stand for "Environmental Union".

There were in all a dozen fringe meetings on Europe at party conference, with just one Eurosceptical one from the "common market safeguards campaign", a throwback to the 1970s. Whatever the detailed views of Gordon Brown turn out to be, the party as a whole remains pretty committed to Europe - an improved and enlarged EU, of course, but not an unravelled one.

Party Conference has an unusual atmosphere: the first time in years
that it's not at a seaside resort!

I will not blog on the Conference, as I am off to Strasbourg Tuesday,
but refer readers instead to the blog of Jonathon Roberts, executive member of the LME. Jonathan, 24 years old, works in my office and he won a competition to be the official Labour Conference blogger. He has done a blog for his CLP, Thirsk + Malton, and his Conference blog will, I'm sure, be equally frank and entertaining.

Interesting to see the widespread enthusiasm behind the European team in the Ryder Cup, with much waving of the European flag.

It's a good illustration of our multiple identities. There is no contradiction between supporting England in the football World Cup, Britain in the Olympics and Europe in golf (and, come to that, Yorkshire in cricket and a local club in league football) - they are different dimensions, not conflicting loyalties.

For most of us, that is. I was amused - but not surprised - to overhear a conversation between two Tory Eurosceptics where one said he was supporting the American team in the Ryder Cup because he could not bring himself to support the (largely British!) European team!

Jyoti Basu, the 93 year old elder statesmen of the communist party of India (and a former Chief Minister of Western Bengal), has announced that he would like to step down from his position – only to be told by his Party that he has to carry on until at least 2008. Despite reports that he is “unamused”, his party members and beyond continue to beg for him to stay even longer.

Perhaps Tony Blair's advisers should give him a ring and ask for some tips!

I was interviewed this morning by John Humphries on the Radio 4 "Today" programme about the football bung scandal revealed by BBC TV last night. As it happens, I had dinner last night with the Secretary General of UEFA, Lars-Christer Olsen who has long been concerned about the role of agents and about the amount of unaccounted money, sometimes of dubious origin, floating around in football.

Football needs to clean up its act if it is to avoid losing credibility and going into a spiral of decline. UEFA's intention to tightly regulate agents deserves support, as do the measures proposed by the Independent Review of European Football (click here for report) on which I served.

If the BBC's revelations help to create momentum behind the necessary reforms, then so much the better.

One silver lining: at least there are no allegations of match fixing. If ever it were to come to that, the credibility of Engish football would be shattered overnight.

Last night, I pressed Mr Olsson further on the leniency with which AC Milan has been treated (for more click here and here). Interestingly, UEFA seems to agree, claiming that they would have wished to take firm action but their lawyers warned them that their own rules are insufficient to enable that without losing a subsequent court case. Case law and the creation of the International Court for Arbitration in Sport have changed the situation since the days when UEFA took radical measures against English clubs in the 1980s. So, to strengthen the capacity of UEFA to actually do something in cases such as the Italian one, a change to its own statutes is necessary, and Olssen is proposing precisely that to the forthcoming UEFA Congress. I hope he succeeds.

Meanwhile, for all those Leeds Utd supporters who would like to see the result of the European Cup Winners' Cup Final of 1973 overturned, UEFA's statute of limitations on re-opening cases is 20 years. It would need new and extraordinary clear evidence to persuade them to make an exception. If there is anyone out there who has such evidence, please come forward.

This morning, I addressed the French equivalent of the CBI (the MEDEF) in Paris - only 85 minutes from Brussels thanks to the High Speed Train (TGV).

I enjoy telling French audiences how France is the real problem country in Europe (why would anyone think it was Britain?), not just because they rejected the Constitutional Treaty but because they have one of the poorest records of applying European law, they ignored the stablity pact on macro-economic policy, they are overly protectionist, they oblige the European Parliament to shift from Brussels to Strasbourg for four days per month, and they have been extremely reticent about accepting new countries into our Union.

This is not new: the French only approved the EEC treaty by a narrow majority, rejected the EDC treaty, and even boycotted all EU Council meetings for a while when they weren't getting their way in the 1960s. They held up British membership for ten years and blocked the start of elections to the Eurpean Parliament for twenty. I could go on...

Indeed, CIVITAS, a British think-tank, has done precisely that with a new publication called "How France Has Undermined The European Project" and its accompanying press release entitled "EU would work better without France".

Interestingly, far from being provoked, the audience seemed to largely agree with my point. France is going through a period of soul-searcing on its attitude to Europe, having to get used to the fact that it is far from playing the leading role as it once did, but unsure how to react. Above all, the French are unsure about what it is that they disliked about the Constitutional Treaty, with some having opposed it because it was too "liberal", others because it was too "social", some because it was too integrationist, but more because it was too limitative of integration ("too British"), some through opposition to other European matters such as Turkish accession or the services directive ("the context not the text") and many through simple opposition to Chirac and the government. How will France be able to identify the points it might like to address in revisiting the Constitutional Treaty? What will its future attitude to Europe be?

Seals are in the news this week in more ways than one.

Last week in Strasbourg, Written Declaration 38, calling for a ban on seal products, stormed to adoption with well over half of all MEPs signing it.

The director of the Humane Society, Mark Glover, who was in the Parliament as a guest of myself, and the rest of his team, deserve plenty of praise for some intensive and very effective lobbying.

It now means that the European Parliament is officially calling for a ban on the import, export and sale of all harp and hooded seal products. As Europe is one of the biggest importers of seal products, such a ban would put severe pressure on the trade.

All this neatly ties in with Roger Helmer being returned the Tory whip in the European Parliament. With Cameron having already signalled his intention to alienate the Conservatives from the rest of Europe’s centre -right parties, it was no great surprise to see such an extreme Eurosceptic welcomed back to the fold.

However, with all the timing and subtlety of Kevin Pietersen with a sledgehammer, just a day after his return to the Conservatives, Helmer found himself in the papers for his less than caring, sharing, environmentally-friendly, Cameron-esque attitude to seals.

Responding to a letter from a 17-year-old asking him to sign Written Declaration 38, Helmer’s tart response was a rather pompous letter (which even alluded to the lack of moral competence of seals) telling her he would not be signing the declaration, as beating seals over the head “is humane” and her attitude was “mawkish, sentimental and unhelpful”.

There is also an allegation that Helmer encouraged her to stop caring for “dumb animals”. Advice apparently taken, the student went straight to the media and ensured he took a beating of his very own in the local and national media.

A less than glorious return for the Conservatives’ prodigal son!

The following is an extract of an email I recently received from a prominent Labour councillor in my constituency:

"Some good comments on your blog about Tony Blair and the continual demands for a Blair to go now.

I'm perfectly happy for MPs to have whatever views they wish in private, and will be quite happy to see Tony replaced by Gordon Brown, John Reid or any other potential replacement (I would draw the line at John McDonnell, I have to say) .....

But why can't we have any of our arguments in private?

Meanwhile, we seem to want to allow the public to sleepwalk into the idea that all the achievements of the last eight years - full employment, investment in health and education, the pledge to eradicate child poverty, help for working families, real regeneration of our inner cities and urban areas, etc, etc, - will just carry on without concern if we let Cameron and his Tories in."

Sentiments I echo heartily.

I am in Ramallah on the day of what could be a historic breakthrough in the Middle East peace process, and there is a palpable sense of excitement in the air.

Since the election victory of Hamas, the international community has refused to deal with the Palestinian government as Hamas refuses to even to recognise the right of Israel to exist. For some time, it has been suggested that a government of national unity would be a way around the deadlock, but until now negotiations between the main Palestinian parties had failed to produce agreement, partly as there was doubt that such a step would be sufficient for the international community to re-engage.

Tony Blair had arrived here one day ahead of us. I had fully expected to spend the next few days repeating his argument that, if they established a government of national unity, the international community would talk to it. In the event, within hours of his statement, such a government was agreed. The Palestinian legislators I met, including Hamas, had great expectations of this breakthrough, which includes an implicit recognition by Hamas of Israel.

Israel’s reaction is inevitably cautious and they are in the middle of an acute bout of self-doubt following the Lebanon conflict. But within hours, they released a number of Palestinian prisoners.

One curious aspect of all this from a British perspective is the very high esteem that both the Israelis and Palestinians have for Tony Blair. What a contrast with some people back home!

If Tony Blair goes in May next year, then it will be his successor who represents Britain at the crucial EU summit next June on the future of the constitutional treaty, which, one way or the other, will determine the pattern of EU politics for the next few years.

This has so far attracted little comment in the media, but it is of potentially crucial importance for the future of Europe.

Blair has been a consistent supporter of Britain playing a constructive role in Europe and he has continued to support the constitutional treaty when some cabinet ministers were luke-warm or even hostile (despite Labour's manifesto commitment to campaign enthusiastically for it). Blair has grasped that the issue is not dead and buried, as British commentators are all too quick to proclaim, and that even if the text of the treaty does eventually die a death, then (1) it is important that Britain is not blamed for killing it off (when there are others who are all too keen to blame the Brits) and (2) the issues the treaty was intended to solve have not conveniently gone away, but remain on the table.

If Brown is there, then he will have to get to grips very quickly with issues that he has sometimes shown a disdain for. He will have to overcome suspicions from our European partners that he is a closet Eurosceptic, who rarely attends the "Ecofin" council meetings and, when he does, has a reputation of lecturing other finance ministers on how much better the British economy is doing under his stewardship (which particularly irks those who are doing better or as well, including the Finns, the Irish and the Dutch who Britain considers to be natural allies in EU discussions). He also seems, for a socialist, to be overly gushing in his admiration of US labour market deregulation and lack of social protection. And of course many see him, rightly or wrongly, as the man who thwarted Blair on bringing Britain into the euro.

The discussion on the constitutional treaty will force Brown, if it is him, to come clean on where he stands. If he takes the view (which is the easy option in terms of the short run in domestic politics) that treaty reform is dead and the enlarged EU should simply muddle through with the old treaties, then he will have both made the wrong choice in favour of a downgraded EU and he will have alienated the majority of our EU partners. He will also have kicked the British objective of further enlargement of the EU into the long grass.

If, on the other hand, he were to embrace the view that Britain is constructively committed to building a more effective, accountable EU and is still supportive of the reforms contained in the constitutional treaty, then he would both maximise British influence and give a sporting chance to the reforms that the EU genuinely needs.

Of course, there are many who would wish to see him lay his cards on the table before the summit - indeed before they would be prepared to vote for him as Labour leader. There is still a strongly pro-Europe sentiment running through the Labour party and many members, including ministers and former ministers, MPs and MEPs, trade unionists and others, for whom the issue of Europe will be a litmus test of their willingness to back him or to seek an alternative.

The Middle East has been a zone of conflict throughout my lifetime. Is there any chance whatsoever that this can change? Can they do what we did in Europe and transform an area where war and conflicts were regular (and even expected every generation) into a zone of peace, stability and relative prosperity?

That is the key question facing the Middle East, with knock-on effects for the rest of the world. The cost of this conflict over six decades has been so enormous that, if you added it up and shared the sum among all Israelis and Palestinians, everyone of them would be half way to being a millionaire... And that's just the material costs, taking no account of human suffering.

All elected representatives involved in debating foreign policy and voting on trade agreements with Israel or sums of money for Palestine have a duty to understand the issues involved as best they can.

That is what I hope to do over the next few days as part of a Labour delegation visiting Israel and Palestine. We go at a time of acute despair, but conscious of the imperative need to at last find a settlement that all sides can live with.

I have written to UKIP MEP Nigel Farage after he pledged to spend as little as six days a month in Brussels and Strasbourg if he wins the current UKIP leadership contest.

I await his response with interest!

Below is a copy of the letter I have sent to Mr Farage.

Dear Mr Farage,

As the UK Independence Party’s leadership contest draws to a close, I am writing to ask you to publicly clarify a manifesto pledge you have made to your membership.

On your website – www.votenigel.org – you state:

"As the elected Leader of UKIP I would cut my time over there [Brussels and Strasbourg] to 6 or 7 days a month, and the rest of my working time I would devote to UKIP affairs."

I would hope that you do not need to be reminded that it is the British taxpayer who pays for you to carry out your duties as an MEP. Your constituents expect you to be representing their needs in Parliament on a full-time basis, and they do not expect you to reduce your working hours in order to follow your own personal political agenda.

You often speak, unfairly I might add, of the EU as a “gravy train”, with those elected to serve the people being involved purely for their own financial gain. On this basis, and should you be elected Leader, may I assume that you will not be receiving your full salary, as a result of the reduced representative service that you will be offering your constituents? I would hope that we both agree, receiving your full salary would be an act of astonishing hypocrisy and contempt for the hardworking tax payers of the United Kingdom.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Corbett MEP

Despite the glitzy 'Women to win initiative' recently launched by the self-confessed new-age Conservative Dave Cameron, the Tories have continued to show their true colours on protecting women's rights.

Although I welcome Dave's commitment to 'talk the talk' on gender equality, he still remains a member of the exclusive London dining club White's, which, in the 21st century, still requires its members to have the Y chromosome.

Moreover, in the European Parliament, Tory MEPs yesterday broke ranks from their mainstream partners in the EPP-ED in the European Parliament to reject a key peice of EU legislation on domestic violence.

However, this is not the first time that the Euro Tories have voted against measures to combat the oppresson of women.

Earlier this year the Tory MEPs voted against and abstained on a report that condemned female genital mutilation and called for rape within marriage to be a crime across the EU - apart from Caroline Jackson MEP, the only female member of the 27 strong Tory group.

In the light of this, combined with the Tory leader's membership of sexist gentlemen's clubs, I think people can be forgiven for thinking that Cameron's new talk on women's rights is nothing more than a cynical smokescreen.

With the tabloids having already filled their boots with the Tory-inspired map myth this week, Telegraph writer David Rennie has uncovered another scurrilous attempt by the tabloids to simply invent a load of nonsense about the EU.

You can read the full story here but to summise, an unamed British tabloid sent three hacks to Bulgaria to try and find a prostitute who would be willing to travel with them to the UK when the country joins the EU. They are also alleged to have spent some time looking for people capable of forging passports.

Now their cover has been blown this story shouldn’t see the light of day but it is another example of just how low some of the British press will sink to discredit the EU.

I – and many of my colleagues – are getting increasingly fed up with the antics of some in the Westminster village about the date of Tony Blair’s departure.

Come the 2009/2010 General Election, who will be fussed about whether Tony handed over power in 2007 or 2008? The focus will be entirely on the new leader and the election.

Those who are convinced that an early handover date is better than a later one, should realise that the damage caused by the arguments about it far outweigh any possible gain from an early departure.

But I am anyway not convinced that an early handover would do us any good. The relentless media onslaught on Tony Blair would simply switch to his successor who, in a few months, would be in the same position.

Tony Blair promised the electorate to serve a full third term. He should keep his promise and hand over a few months before the next election so that his successor goes to the country during his honeymoon period.

The latest ridiculous story in the British press claims that the EU plans to break up Britain, with amongst other things Kent becoming part of France.

The story originates from a disgraceful press release put out by the Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, Eric Pickles, in which he says: “I fear Eurocrats could literally wipe Britain off the map”.

He claims that Britain is to be broken up into a series of transnational regions and will no longer exist. The Tories knew full well that the tabloids would lap this up, and as expected it made several papers.

However, if you actually look at the press release’s references it transpires that this so-called plot is nothing more than the old Interreg regions – which is merely co-operation between different regions who share similar problems, such as the Atlantic regions and was actually set up when the Conservatives were in government. Presumably if they saw a geological map of Europe, they would claim that Scotland was being merged with Austria because they both have granite.

Sadly, the Conservative Party, which is trying to portray itself as a serious party, has found itself aligned with UKIP, caught wilfully misleading the British public.

Click here to read the one-minute speech I made on the subject in Strasbourg.

Any debate on immigration in the UK is normally accompanied by much brow-furrowing over what it actually means to be British, in particular English.

One of my constituents has sent me what his Swiss friend believes being British represents.

He suggests: “Being British is about driving a German car to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer, then travelling home, grabbing an Indian curry or Turkish kebab on the way, to sit on Swedish furniture and watch American shows on Japanese TV. And the most British thing of all? Suspicion of anything foreign.”

Swedish phones, Chinese clothes, South American coffee and Indian tea can all be added to that list.

Another suggestion I have had as to what being British truly means, is a propensity to worry excessively about what being British truly means.