Perhaps confounding expectations of what the Spectator would be like with Fraser Nelson as editor, James Forsyth at Coffee House has been quick to man the trenches on Cameron’s behalf and insist he “hasn’t broken a pledge on Europe”. Such activity from someone, who is, among “the leading commentators”, according to Danny Finkelstein, to well “understand what the Cameron team are trying to do” might suggest that this team is worried that UKIP could indeed save the day for Labour.

I’m doubtful that Nigel Farage and co have it in them to save Labour’s speck (at least any more than the BNP have the potential to steal this same bacon by similarly undercutting the vote of one of the major parties). But, certainly, it is in Labour’s interests to widen and magnify the divisions that obviously linger within the Tory Party on Europe.

Ah, a dividing line, Number 10 surely cries. But I hope it doesn’t. As I have argued elsewhere, Labour needs to be more realistic about our capacity to impact perceptions of the Tories. Essentially, our capacity in this regard is almost zero. Instead of trying to mine this very limited potential, we should be focusing on changing perceptions of ourselves; presenting a positive case for Labour. This argument holds on Europe as much as it does on other areas of policy. So, rather than any ”clever” tactical games, I suggest that Labour makes a positive case for the EU and for our position on the Lisbon Treaty and the future of the EU, while hoping that the snipping of Bill Cash et al opens up the divisions within the Tories that any ”clever” tactical games would seek to achieve and, in so doing, pushes some Tory voters in the direction of UKIP.

It might seem madness (even suicidal) to attempt to present a positive case for the EU and Lisbon Treaty in the UK at the moment. But, first, a more negative politics of dividing lines ignores the reality of our ability to impact perceptions of the Tories. David Aaronovitch’s ability in this regard is probably now stronger than the whole of the Cabinet’s combined. Second, part of the reason that this seems madness is because the dots between the Lisbon Treaty and our national interest remain so un-joined. Take, for example, Daniel Korski’s well-made argument today: ”Europe has the US president it wished for, but Barack Obama lacks the strong transatlantic partner he desired.” This is profoundly true and it is manifestly in the UK’s interest that the EU becomes this strong transatlantic partner. It is far more likely to be able to perform such a role once the improvements to its systems of governance enabled by the Lisbon Treaty are in place.

Labour should make arguments of this kind; arguments that are global and universal in focus, as we leave Cameron and Cash to petty and parochial arguments (Cameron and Cash even sounds suitably like a petty and parachial firm of solictors). Combining UKIP with an enlightened and far-sighted approach from Labour could yet save the day.

The main piece of instruction that I picked up at the debate is that the speakers in favour of the motion (Michael Heseltine, Minette Marrin and Stephan Shakespeare) were only able to declare the left dead by mistaking the left with something it never was. Both Marrin and Shakespeare argued (wrongly) that an ideologically driven desire to control is a central left-ist motivation and that such control will be impossible in the digital era. Thus, they declared the left dead.

Their logic negates the savaging that Jan Moir’s career has just received at the hands of the Twitterati. In the pre-Twitter era Moir may have got away with peddling her vile spite. In the Twitter era she set herself on a collision course with an ascendant cultural egalitarianism. So, Marrin and Shakespeare are right that the internet is an agent of empowerment that throws off attempts to control and shackle, but the force that this agent unleashed in the direction of Moir simply speaks to the potency of the force that they declare dead: the left.

As Jonathan Freedland, who argued against the motion, pointed out cultural and social norms on race, gender, the environment and sexuality have come to be constructed around values and views that would have been considered left-ist, if not extreme left-ist, a generation ago. Homophobia just isn’t going to be served on the Twitterati menu. There was no vanguard coercing the Twitterati into championing a left-ist ideology, as Marrin and Shakespeare presume that there must be to sustain any left-ist ideology. They chose to adopt one and in so choosing they demonstrate both the strength of the left’s victory on social and cultural norms over the past generation and the potential of the internet to secure more victories for the left in the next generation.

In the past week alone, for example, I have used the internet to pick up great ideas on combating the BNP from Mary Riddell and David Aaronovitch. The defeat of Moir gives me confidence that if these ideas are taken forward, then the left will need no vanguard to defeat the BNP.

It’s worth a look. He advocates a policy on inheritance tax – also, wrongly, known as the death tax – that I previously been sympathetic to myself. This is to “hypothecate the revenues from inheritance tax to the new Child Trust Fund. In true Baconian fashion, the wealth of one generation would thus be used to fertilise the growth of the next. It might also make inheritance tax more popular, or at least less disliked”.

This hypothecation is fundamentally just: redistribution, via the Child Trust Fund, from those who are born into wealth to those who are not. It also challenges the misconception that the death tax tag encourages: that the person being taxed is the person who has died, rather than those who stand to inherit unearned wealth.

The death tax language perfectly framed the inheritance tax issue from the perspective of George W Bush’s Republicans, while the linking of inheritance tax and the Child Trust Fund nicely frames these policies from a Labour perspective. Framing policies in ways that speak to your values allow beachheads to be created – Policies that are easily understood by the public but which cut to the core of your governing philosophy. Selling council houses performed this function for Margaret Thatcher. The minimum wage did the trick for the early Blair years. Labour desperately needs to quickly establish other beachheads. Le Grand’s idea might be a good way to start.

This came back to me today when seeing Denis MacShane’s call to beware the European street. The main employer in Whitehaven is, of course, Sellafield, where, as Michael White notes, “they hope to revive the flagging local economy by helping build new nuclear plants – and want most of the jobs to go to their own pool of skilled workers”.

Those closer to the Cumbrian street may have a better idea how many of the illegal strikers at Sellafield voted BNP in December. I grew up in the area but can now only note that the BNP are the only political party to have supported the strikes, wonder and worry. Certainly, David Aaronovitch is right to draw attention to “the half-truths” that have fanned the spat of strikes and Gary Becker has provided a massively coherent critique of protectionism that would be very warmly welcomed both by Peter Mandelson and in Davos.

But Davos is a long way from Whitehaven. The facts on the ground, to appropriate another phrase with a Middle Eastern origin, in Whitehaven may feel to many in Whitehaven not so far removed from the facts on the ground in Lincolnshire, where Janice Turner claims, “the skilled oilmen of Lindsey now find themselves flotsam and jetsam on the economic tide”. But facts, as Aaronovitch points out, are not what have fuelled the strikes. Nor are facts the currency of the BNP. They are what the people of Whitehaven and Lincolnshire richly deserve, however.

Equally, they do not deserve ‘social dumping’.  Just as there are perfectly legitimate economic arguments against parallel trade, which an economist can support without parting company with Becker’s arguments against protectionism, so too one does not need to deploy political arguments to oppose both ‘social dumping’ and protectionism. There are strong economic arguments for a position that distinguishes between protection and protectionism, as Peter Mandelson has previously said. These economic arguments form the basis of the political case that Labour should be taking forward to win back streets in place like Cumbria.

However, ’social dumping’ would not have occurred at the Lindsey Oil Refinery on Humberside if, as Total claim, the Italian and Portuguese workers’ wages are the same as other equivalent jobs on the site. The facts of this claim are to be established by Acas. The reason why this claim is suspected was identified by Peter Hain in the Commons on Monday.

“I still find it puzzling that European companies can bring their labour in, meet all the costs of accommodating and transporting them—both to this country and to and from work—and still claim to abide by national pay rates and conditions of service. That does not seem to add up, and I wonder whether the real answer to that puzzle is to be found in the fact that these subcontractors subcontracted all the way down the line to a point at which nobody really knew whether the workers concerned were being exploited or whether local workers were getting the justice and fairness to which they are entitled”.

The decisions of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on the Posted Workers Directive mean that the government cannot require that firms abide by national pay rates and conditions of service in respect of posted workers. The verdicts of the ECJ mean that legally such workers are only entitled to the local minimum pay rates and conditions. However, as Hain pointed out, the wages at Lindsey are “many times higher than the minimum wage”. This certainly leaves scope for such wages to be undercut and ‘social dumping’ to occur. There is no inconsistency between recognising the unfairness of this and arguing, as Hain did, “that right-wing anti-Europeanism and protectionism would be disastrous for British workers”.

There has long been talking on the left of building a fairer form of globalisation, while, there is also much to fear from the recent trend towards de-globalisation. Globalisation is more likely to avoid going into reverse if it can be made fairer and seen to be so. Part of what this involves is ironing out any tensions between protection, which avoids ‘social dumping’, and protectionism, which causes a different kind of harm. Davos may be a long way from Whitehaven but the right mix of providing protection and opposing protectionism requires that this distance is minimised.