Chairs by Tobias Scarpa are reasonably priced around pounds 300 while an original

Chairs by Tobias Scarpa are reasonably priced, around pounds 300, while an original 1950s mushroom-shaped Italian desk lamp costs pounds 150 to pounds 200.The recent creation of Bonhams' Futures department - contemporary ceramics, design and visual arts - has sprung from the success of these sales. The impact of this realignment on popular culture, and in particular the spy genre, has afforded much innocent amusement to readers who have watched to see what spy writers would make of a world in which the old order of battle, MI-whatever versus the KGB, no longer makes sense.One result has been the runaway success of a new literary form, the pseudonymous account of undercover military exploits typified by the books of Andy McNab. Former "enemies" such as Poland and the Czech Republic are now serious contenders to join the EU and even Nato, the alliance that used to be ranged against them. The Russians were never quite such unequivocal hate figures as those provided by pre- 1945 Germany but the Cold War did at least provide plenty of material for films and books, not to mention our sense of national identity. Since the collapse of the old Eastern bloc, things have not been so simple. For most of this century, the British have been blessed, if that is the word, with clearly identifiable enemies: the Boche, the Nazis, the evil empire in the East as Ronald Reagan characterised the USSR and its satellites. One woman I know refers to her former BF, with studied venom, as "the person I hate most in the world" - a testimony to the importance, not just of friendship, but of having enemies This is as true of politics as it is of individuals. Of course it doesn't work all the time, and the best of friends sometimes fall out and turn into each other's worst enemies.

EVERYONE needs friends - people you can confide in, who share your view of the world, who don't mind being called at 2am when a love affair collapses. That does not mean you can lawfully go and drop bombs on them. Mrs Clwyd, Mr Blair, a huge majority of the House of Commons and, it seems, most of the voters adopt a contrary opinion As John Morley said of the Boer War, they are wrong. For as Enoch Powell once said to me and, doubtless, to numerous others as well: error is none the less error for being universal..

Mrs Clwyd is against Saddam because he is a bad lot who has been beastly to the Kurds. But the world is full of shady characters who have been horrible to all kinds of people. What made her support Mr Blair, who has not, to put it at its lowest, treated her with much kindness?At least she made a speech explaining her position, which was more than the rest of her sisters managed to accomplish. But then, Israel is a client-state, a dependancy, of the USA; whereas Iraq was merely armed by that country and by this one in the not very distant past.Mr Blair has not only emasculated the left. He has also, it appears, very nearly destroyed British high-mindedness as well. True, the women members I listed earlier are not, by and large, names to conjure with or even to toss about in the back garden before going off to the pub There is, however, at least one exception in Mrs Clwyd She is high-minded, a dissenter and of the left, sort of. Lord Mayhew, the former Conservative attorney-general, comprehensively demolished this argument on Tuesday in the debate in the Lords.

In any case, if disobedience to UN resolutions provided a justification for armed attack, Israel would long ago have been reduced to rubble. I supported, though without much enthusiasm, the Falklands War of 1982 With more conviction I supported the Gulf War in 1990-91. On both occasions the reason for my support was the same: that a country had invaded the territory of another country in clear breach of international law.Over Iraq today the United States and United Kingdom governments have provided the most specious justification for the use of massive force, which is that Iraq has been and is in breach of United Nations resolutions. In the same way political dissent overlaps with the political left.

Mr Dalyell is a dissenter; Mr John McDonnell (another of the 25) is of the old hard left of the early 1980s; while Mr Benn is a bit of both.In pieces of this kind it is as well to put one's cards on the table. I use the word in its political rather than in its religious sense. There is an overlap but they are different concepts and different groups. When you think that the 25 dissenters (27 if you count the tellers, Mr Benn and Mr Dalyell) included four Welsh Nationalists, you must conclude that the left in 1998 is in a pretty bad way.But so is dissent altogether.