We have run several successful campaigns, in and outside Parliament.

We had a lot of fun with the Two Jags campaign against John Prescott. The public is heartily sick of rip off government at the pumps, traffic jam packed roads and woefully inadequate public transport. The government was forced to cut the petrol tax a little – the markets have now come to their rescue. People rushed to sign our Bust the Pump Tax petition. Practically everyone agrees that the government has become the worst highway robber ever to work the streets and forecourts in Britain, and all agree that you can't drive the motorist off the road if there is no bus or train to take instead. Every day I look down the bottom of my road to see if the integrated transport policy we were promised has arrived. Each day I have to take the car out of the garage as there is still no railway station or bus stop within a mile of my gate.

Then there's been the great campaign to save the pound. Collecting signature for that is as easy as shelling peas. We had to organise the queues to sign in Wokingham when we tried it. The more Labour tell us it's extreme to want to keep the pound, the more we should trumpet the policy. It's not extreme. It's just commonsense. The more they say it is wrong, the more we should remind them that it is the settled wish of a big majority of the British public. It is surprising that in this one crucial area this spineless and focus group driven government should try to stand up to the opinion polls. It will do them nothing but harm.

Raise the profile

We must raise the profile of our campaign against all the stealth taxes. It's a bit difficult to call the petrol tax a stealth tax, now it is so visible. But there is still work to be done to remind people that this government has taken away the married couples tax allowance, has taxed the income on pension funds and has shoved up the Council tax, especially in Conservative areas. If people tell you that at least this government is running a surplus, you should remind them that it is at their expense. Any government, even a spendthrift one like this one, can run a surplus if it stings you enough on the tax bill to start with.

The government is very vulnerable to charges of waste, mismanagement and incompetence for one very simple reason. They are wasteful, incompetent and poor managers. We must make the Dome a symbol of this whole miserable regime. They have raided the People's lottery mercilessly to pay for the grand party they gave the top people on the Dome's opening night. It was a cameo of their whole transport policy that many of the important guests who were told to go by tube were unable to get there on time and had difficulties with the tickets. The Dome one year on is still costing us £2m a month to keep it empty. Now they have put Railtrack into Administration we face a bill of up to £3,500m in the year to March 2002 to keep it going! When a project is ailing they call in more spin doctors. When something needs fixing they just tell you it's mended without bothering to try to fix it.

Years of famine and neglect

Which brings me to the National Health Service. Three years of famine and neglect are to be followed by three years of more money. They are only just realising that money on its own is no answer. It depends how you spend it. If there aren't the people to hire you do not reduce the waiting lists. If it's new wards and beds you need it takes years to build the buildings. In the meantime all you have to show for your efforts is a set of building sites where your hospitals once stood.

Labour's proudest boast, that it is good at running the NHS, will soon prove to be its biggest lie. The longer people wait even to get on a waiting list, the more people who experience cancelled operations or who find the staff harassed and overworked when they finally get into hospital, the fewer people will believe Labour's big health lie.

Labour told us education would be their priority. That looks a bit sick a few years on as well. Everytime we find excellence in the State sector, Labour tries to snuff it out. They want to close down the grammar schools, which have great records for academic achievement. They want to dumb down the exam system so everyone can win prizes. The Chancellor launches a bitter attack upon Oxford University, only to discover he has got his facts wrong. The new Education Secretary has admitted that teachers are burdened too much by instructions and demands from the center. Meanwhile many teachers are still struggling on relatively poor pay, wilting under the weight of paper and instructions that comes from Whitehall day by day. If you could improve teaching by issuing another circular from Whitehall Britain would already have the best schools in the world. Ministers should pause to ask themselves why bureaucratic bombardment is not working.

Plenty to shout about

There's a lot to write about in the In Touches, letters to the papers and all the other avenues open to us in a democracy. Conservatives often say to me, what can I do to help in the big campaign to keep a democracy in these islands? What can I do to keep the pound, or see off the next federal Treaty from Brussels?

I always reply, you can do a lot. You can give your time to our party, collect signatures for Our Save the Pound campaign, raise money for our advertising and leaflets, spread the word by telling friends and neighbours. I say you can and should write to local and national newspapers, TV and radio. Many of your letters will not be published, but everyone counts. They all have to be logged, reported on, measured. If enough of you write the broadcasters have to give your spokesmen more airtime, and the subject of your choice more attention. So never give up. You do matter. You can make a difference. Iain can't do it all himself. Be an actor in our national drama, not a critic in the dress circle wringing your hands if you don't like the script.