An example of this is the No10 petitions site. I was on BBC and Sky defending the innovation at the time when a minister is said to have called the instigator a "prat" - and I recall asking a journalist, "how many times would the anti-road charging lobby have to send you press releases before you would cover their issue on Sky primetime?"

The fact is that no number would have secured that group such coverage - but by securing a million supporters, they proved that the No10 petitions site had narrowed the gap between people and the media. The system now provides people with a new opportunity to get the media's attention and once you have that, you are better able to influence government.

Culture Secretary James Purnell also spoke at the event and he gave me the very strong impression that he supports that narrowing of the gap between people and power - and the use of new media as one of the ways to achieve it.

In fact, it was staying to hear James that made me miss out on the karaoke.

Once at the BBC, I was parked in a small room with the other guest - Conservative Future Vice Chair Claire Palmer - so that we could watch Question Time and prepare for the home audience reactions, to which we were to respond.

Once on camera, presenter Chris Eakin raised the issues of Iran sanctions, immigration, Tony Blair as prospective EU president and the smacking of children. Maybe something else too - I may have forgotten.

In a sense, and maybe because of my start to the evening, they all seemed to be the same issue to me. The issue being that people aren't valued enough.

On the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons, the position of Britain and the US seems to be that we can be trusted with such weapons but other countries cannot. Even if for a moment we accept this is true just for the sake of argument, the reasoning doesn't hold up when because we have no way of telling whether the next British government or the one after that can be trusted - and surely the hazard is so great that it's not worth even a small risk?

For us to predict that all future British governments will be safe owners of nuclear weapons is to tell the Iranian people that British people are better than they are. If you were Iranian, how would that make you feel?

I would prefer a more honest approach to foreign policy. I would prefer it if we just told the Iranians that we will use any might at the disposal of us and our allies to prevent them gaining a nuclear capability because we don't think it's in our interest. Then it wouldn't make us look so stupid considering the US has ripped up the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty and as Russia hurriedly re-arms. At least then we would be operating on a might-is-right basis rather than trying to convince people at home and abroad that some people are simply better than others on the basis of their nationality.

The immigration issue managed to wind me up a bit - again because it is couched in the terms of people being of little value. On QT, Spectator editor Fraser Nelson referred to poor estates where people live on benefits because immigrants come and do the poorly paid jobs - a position that the Tory Claire Palmer repeated and which infuriated me no end. The Tory position seems to be that working class people should go and work in factories or call centres or bring in crops rather than living on benefits because that way we won't need immigrants to fill the gap.

In short, they're saying that working class kids should know their place and aspire to working class jobs. This is at the heart of why I believe that Toryism is founded on an evil ideology - that some people are by birth of greater value than others. It's this belief that allows them to expect every middle class child to go to university with few exceptions and to allow only the exceptional working class children to have that opportunity. When Tories attack Labour for aspiring to get 50% of young people into university, they're not talking about their own children - they want 100% of their own children getting degrees and professional jobs.

I might have diverged from immigration on camera as far as i have done here.

On the prospect of Tony Blair becoming President of Europe, I expressed some disappointment that the European Treaty isn't democratising the European institutions. European people won't choose a President, it will be done by intergovernmental horsetrading and there will be no public accountability. I happen to think that Joschka Fischer might be a good candidate for President of Europe if we have to have one.

I'm kind of running out of steam now - it is nearly 4am - but I have in the course of writing this ramble about my evening, come to a clearer idea of the vision I want the Labour Party to present for the future of Britain.

I want a Britain where all policy making is based on the idea that all people, despite our differences, are of equal value. I want an education system that seeks out the talents and abilities of all our children, particularly if they have social disadvantages. I want an economics that counts people as assets rather than liabilities. I want a foreign policy that is predicated on respect for other nations' populations if we can't respect their leaders. I want a government whose interest in the quality of life of its citizens is greater than its interest in mobile phone companies' profits.

In short, politics should be built on a respect for people and sometimes it seems like the political class despises people. It is profoundly unedifying to read about the Tories offering to forego the Ashcroft money advantage in return for ending Labour's union money advantage and all with the proviso that political parties should get greater state funding.

Where is the consideration of the voter in this discussion? All discussions of electoral reform seem to be couched in terms of what's good for parties rather than what is fairest for voters - and we have just been criticised for mismanaging the Scottish elections after the voters took last place in our priorities.

I don't accept the Tory attack that Douglas Alexander somehow manipulated the election (if he did, we didn't win so it didn't work) - but the political class is guilty. We have somehow divorced politics from reality so much that the public has been convinced that politicians are corrupt and that political parties are not to be trusted.

For how much longer can this go on?