Sequels, it has oft been said, are generally disappointing. Aficionados of all stripes will gloomily concur. I’m told that the worst sequel ever (surely an accolade if ever there was one) was something gloriously called Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil. But – I’m truly sorry to report – even Z-list horror flicks have nothing on the latest follow-up catastrophe.

Twenty years ago, world leaders decamped to Rio de Janeiro for the most celebrated environmental meeting of the century. Rio 1992 is, still, something of a cult classic in environmental circles. It also spawned an alphabet soup of acronyms: from the CBD and the IPF to the RDED and the UNFCCC, it finally felt like the bureaucrats were seeing green. Steely optimism was in the air. I was a sprightly seven months old at the time, but I like to think I cheered.

The world has, of course, recently been treated to Rio+20, a monumental meeting feted as a turning point in an otherwise sluggish diplomatic game. It was, to put it mildly, lacklustre. As multilateral chinwags go, the new Rio was on a par with last year’s Durban meeting, a critical conference that delayed a ratified climate treaty until 2020. It might be unfair to have expected too much by way of environmental targets, and, admittedly, there were slender gains on peripheral issues. Yet Rio+20 spoke of a deeper malaise, a toxic, narcoleptic weariness that threatens to derail the aspirations expressed twenty years previously. Drift any longer and we’ll be sleepwalking into a catastrophe.

The inconvenient truth is that the globalised UN process no longer provides a credible solution to climate change (let alone the other ecological woes tabled for discussion). This leaves the world at a fatal impasse, where, for once, the path is no longer clear. The solution will likely involve a makeshift patchwork of regional agreements, and urgently resorting to ersatz bilateral initiatives to establish some kind of protection for vulnerable states.

As expected, familiar tensions were aroused: the west, somewhat evasively, played fanfares for the promised ‘green economy’, whilst developing states doggedly pursued CBDR (‘common but differentiated responsibility’). Such beleaguered countries – largely lead by the so-called “BASIC” economies – make the plausible case that duty to act should be partitioned according to historical culpability. The notorious US objection to the Kyoto Protocol – the flimsy titbit of climate legislation agreed in 1997 – turned on a refusal to tolerate such moral logic, establishing an inevitable deadlock that has impaired progress ever since. It is a marginal triumph for equitability that CBDR survived Rio+20, though translating the principle into practice will be a diplomatic headache.

The ‘green economy’ mantra, conversely, has yet to prove its credentials. On the one hand, the recognition that GDP is a one-dimensional social metric is a welcome one: we need a broader, more progressive measure of development, based on ‘natural capital’. And yet, nobody is particularly sure what it means. Recalibrating the economic system for this age of enlightened environmentalism is a radical and laudable aim, but – claim detractors – the ‘green economy’ movement does no such thing; rather, it is a vacuous smokescreen for business-as-usual growth . The critics may well be right. Indeed, Caroline Spelman, the UK’s environment secretary, recently provoked ecological ire in claiming that full-blown sustainable development was not, despite appearances, oxymoronic. For ‘green economy’ advocates, the perceived trade-off between economic growth and environmental welfare is a dangerous illusion

I can’t help feeling that we should simply bite the proverbial bullet and take the bolder line: Spelman may well be right, but the green case does not rest on it’s being compatible with economic development. If we are serious about arresting the ever-deepening extinction crisis, we should – to put things bluntly – be prepared to pay for it.

In hindsight, it seems that Rio+20 was dead before it started. With electoral and economic distractions at home, many key players (including Angela Merkel and Barack Obama) simply ignored the invitation. Environmental and social welfare has slipped, fatally, off the agenda. Aware of this modern lassitude, Brazil’s draft text (which eventually became the conference’s final output) was self-consciously bland, a modest affirmation of platitudes to which nobody could object.

However much it pains me to say it, this listless conference has taught me one thing. In a desperate choice between Prom Night IV and Rio+20, I think I know which one I’d choose. These are dark days indeed.

Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Alistair Darling, Nick Clegg, Louise Mensch and now, we discover Chuka Umunna, have all done it. David Cameron has made a point of not telling us whether he has or he hasn’t. Bill Clinton allegedly did so in the beer garden of Oxford’s very own Turf Tavern. David Miliband, on the other hand, has said that he never tried himself because at university he was ‘a bit square’ – mmm, funny that. The topic of discussion? Smoking marijuana, of course.

When it emerged that Bill Clinton had smoked pot in his student days as a Rhodes scholar in Oxford, it almost derailed his presidential campaign. However when Barack Obama confessed to doing the same, hardly anyone batted an eyelid. The black chalkboard propped up against the wall of The Turf, laying claim to be the place where Clinton did or did not first inhale, is now a key attraction, drawing visitors from afar to this historic pub.

In the past decade, views and attitudes towards youthful experiments with cannabis have changed beyond imagination. Across the pond it is whispered that Obama may legalise the drug as his latest big political move. Of course, it’s still a controversial topic to bring to the fore, and the hard facts aren’t available yet to back up any proposed policy. Nonetheless, with drug related violence continuing to increase in America, especially over the border in Mexico, the advocation of marijuana reform is no longer a taboo subject. With a presidential election looming that will probably be closer than most Democrats want to believe, the fact that legalising marijuana could be one of the big policies fronting Obama’s campaign sends out a pretty big statement that perceptions have changed. 

With the expenses controversy, the phone hacking furore, and now the banking scandal in full swing, politicians are desperately trying more than ever to keep ‘in touch’ with the public. Right now, every little bit helps. If that means demonstrating that they were, once at least, just like any other university student, experimenting, trying to fit in with their mates, then so be it. And all that could involve soft drugs. I’m surprised public relations gurus across the land aren’t pushing MPs to come out with it. It won’t be long now before Jacob Rees-Mogg is the next politico to admit that he was ‘rather partial to the odd puff now and again…’

Despite this growing social acceptance, however, we shouldn’t forget that the side effects of smoking marijuana are extremely dangerous. A recent report from the British Lung Foundation shows that there are established scientific links between smoking cannabis and tuberculosis, acute bronchitis and lung cancer. The risk of lung cancer from smoking cannabis is 20 times higher than that from smoking tobacco cigarettes. Smoking cannabis could also expose users to a vastly increased risk of developing a psychotic illness, such as schizophrenia. So despite the growing social acceptance, despite the increasing number of public figures admitting to having smoked cannabis and despite this show of humility, honesty and proof of being ‘in touch’, we shouldn’t just sit back and give them a pat on the back for this achievement – smoking marijuana is dangerous and in the interest of public health deserves to remain a controversial issue. Debate, anyone?

The first thing that strikes you about Hazel is her height – 4ft.10, the ‘motorized munchkin’ of British politics. The second thing I learnt precluded me from mentioning the first; she’s fiery – sugary sweet but not to be crossed. Suggesting a resemblance with Dolores Umbridge of the Harry Potter series would be cruel, but since the thought provokes a chuckle then superficially at least the comparison contains truth.

The daughter of a maintenance fitter, Hazel came into a firmly working-class tradition. She went to grammar school followed by Trent Polytechnic. Practicing law was her unambiguous aspiration; she describes herself then as ‘an angry young woman’ who saw law as a way to ‘stand up for people’. Was it simply a stepping stone into politics? Apparently not, though through emotively recounting the story of a job interview after graduating, it seems to have been on the agenda from the early days. After sending out ‘300 letters without reply’ she’d only been given one interview, and only since her father was doing nuts-and-bolts stuff on the company’s shop floor. ‘Half way through the interview’ however ‘the partner asked what my Dad did for the company. When I told him he was a fitter on the shop floor he closed his folder and said ‘Good Morning, I think I’ve heard enough’ and showed me the door’. This New Labour politician was inducted into the Old Labour world view of class politics at a fragile young age.

‘I realised then that it wasn’t lawyers who changed the world…the people who really change the balance of power between rich and poor are politicians. That really gave me the impetus to go for Parliament’. That wasn’t easy either. Before 1997, she had fought two seats – one ‘unwinnable’ (Tatton, then Neil Hamilton’s fiefdom) and the other (Bury South, where she lost by only 700 votes) distinctly ‘winnable’. Her disappointment over losing in Bury was an experience she coyly describes as ‘character building’. She recounts having to abandon her job and livelihood to stand, and for a while it seemed she would win. In the final week of the campaign however, following Kinnock’s notoriously hubristic Sheffield Rally and a concerted attack by the Murdoch Press, her hard work was undone. You can’t help but feel sympathy for those swing-seat constituency candidates. They must sacrifice almost everything to acheive victory, even though the end result is ultimately the consequence of national mood-swings which, on a local level, appear whimsical and callous.

A tough ride into Parliament meant that once inside she wasn’t afraid of rubbing people up the wrong way. Frank Dobson once expressed his enthusiasm for global warming through a deep aversion to Blears since ‘the rising sea levels would get her first’. Her most theatrical moment came in 2009 when she unsubtly sought to ‘rock the boat’ by resigning from Cabinet. The Labour Party prizes collegial loyalty above all else; such a blatant act of treachery combined with an unreconstructed Blairism and dodgy expenses claims has seen her stock fall among Labour insiders, rendering a return to the front-bench inconceivable. [mm-hide-text]%%IMG%%5658%%[/mm-hide-text]

Yet at 56, in one of the safest seats in the country (Salford, a city ‘deep in my blood’), Hazel’s career is far from over. Like a large number of former New Labour ministers who face backbench renunciation in a Miliband government, Hazel has become a vigorous parliamentarian, campaigning most recently for universally paid internships.

The current arrangement, whereby new graduates in competitive industries must submit to years of slave labour before maybe getting a paid contract, is tough to argue for. Having Hazel as the opponent makes it all the more difficult. I had thought I was fairly clued up on the issue, insecure in the knowledge that I’ll shortly be entering the rat race. Yet my ignorance of the law, and Blears’ expertise in it opened up a fruitful discussion. ‘Unpaid internships are illegal. Under National Minimum Wage legislation, if a person has set hours and set tasks, then they are legally an employee, entitled to the [NMW]’. Indeed the concept of an ‘intern’ has no definition in British law; as Hazel describes it’s a wholly ‘American import’. If you are not an employee, you are a volunteer. Interns – with their concrete working shifts and very real workloads – very much fall into the former. Try taking a day off work as an intern and see what happens.

The point is that no new legislation is needed; the government simply ‘needs to enforce what’s already on the Statute’. However a quick scan of the popular w4mp website, where most parliamentary internships are advertised, shows how Parliament flouts the law it approved itself fourteen years ago. Martin Vickers, a Tory MP, has recently advertised a 6 month unpaid internship. When I contacted his office, his parliamentary aide was quick to reply pointing out that, having himself worked as an unpaid intern, ‘[he] benefited immeasurably from the experience and was [subsequently] successful in securing paid employment in a career I love’. In the past some interns had been paid, ‘depending on their individual circumstances and the availability of funds’ in the office.

I put it to Blears that the good intentions of the campaign betray its naivety. If the problem is a deficit of working-class people in politics, then isn’t the requirement for MPs’ offices to pay them a salary – making it more costly to offer internships – counter-productive? In the murky world of upper-middle class patronage, the few remaining ones will be doled out by MPs to personal contacts and family friends. She’s not persuaded, recounting Tory scaremongering over the NMW, which despite concerns about youth unemployment substantially raising living standards in the bottom decile with no extra unemployment. I suspect the two cases are less than analogous. Indeed it simply is not credible that salaried internships will lead to anything other than their intense scarcity, especially given how sensitive politicians like Vickers are to be seen to provide taxpayer value. But this misses the point, which is that the number of internships available does nothing for social mobility if they are all occupied by rich kids. In other words, fewer overall internships are a fair price to pay for a more equitable distribution of the opportunities entailed by them.

As she rightly notes, it’s not just young people who have a stake in this; ‘the country as whole loses out [in terms of] talent and creativity’. Indeed by allowing internships to be captured by the wealthy we are hugely restricting the talent pool from which to dram tomorrow’s leaders. If Roy Hodgson, the England Manager, decided to only pick players with rich parents, there would be uproar. Not just because of the unfairness – debasing an honour (playing for ones country) by discriminating on income as opposed to merit – but because the team would be pants. The decision would rightly be seen as a massive, self-inflicted own-goal (to exhaust the metaphor).

Leaving Portcullis House I speak with Kay, Hazel’s intern, about her experience. She’d previously nurtured vague political aspirations but hadn’t realised, until now, how getting ahead in the Westminster village ‘is all about the connections’ which she’s tentatively started making. Gazing around the central atrium Kay is a refreshing contrast to the other floppy-haired, self-assured SPADs I observe busying about. If more parliamentarians adopted intern-pay, if we had more Kays, I daresay the next generation’s political leaders would seem considerably less odious.