WHAT'S a liberal-minded person to do these days? In between assaults from Tory leader William Hague and Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw, it's hard to know where to park your woolly principles.

Mr Hague blames liberals, or more fully "the liberal establishment", for most modern ills. "It's time the liberal establishment were taken on," he told a newspaper recently. "I am determined never to be browbeaten by them."

But where is this liberal establishment? If someone could show me the front door, I wouldn't mind paying a visit. And if the liberal establishment is to blame for the way we are today, just what were all those 18 years of Tory government about? For whichever way you look at it, the long Tory reign was as far from liberalism as it was possible to travel. Margaret Thatcher saw to that, and very proud of her illiberal achievements she was too.

Rather cleverly, in as much as he ever does anything clever, Mr Hague has conjured up another bar-room foe in the liberal establishment. For it doesn't really exist, yet people might be persuaded that it does - especially if they are sitting atop a bar-stool, putting the world to rights after more than sufficient lubrication.

Anyway, I am puzzled by Mr Hague's use of the word "browbeaten". According to my dictionary, this means "to frighten (someone) by speaking angrily or looking fierce; to bully". Now liberals don't generally go around looking fierce or bullying people. You can't really be a woolly bully or a fierce fence-sitter.

So all Mr Hague has done is to determine that he will not be browbeaten by something that doesn't really exist. If asked to pin down this liberal establishment, the Tories would no doubt point to the media, academia, the church, senior policemen - in other words, all the usual culprits bad-named by Labour when the Tories are in power.

Politicians need an enemy to survive, and to remind them what their own beliefs and principles are. Jack Straw is often to be heard blaming "woolly-minded liberalism" and the "Hampstead liberals", which can be roughly translated as any open-minded person opposed to whatever harsh new measure Mr Straw has in mind (such as ending the ancient right to trial by jury).

The liberals detested by Mr Straw are, oddly enough, likely to be among his own party's natural supporters. By the way, as wool has largely been replaced by man-made fleece, shouldn't Mr Straw be attacking "fleecy-minded liberals"?

Super-dad Tony Blair has taken to bemoaning "the forces of cynicism", which seems to encompass anyone who doesn't agree that we are now living in a shiny, happy country full of contented people. I'll own up to a degree of exaggeration in that last sentence, yet it is surely true that Tony Blair now carries the look of a man who can't believe he isn't better understood.

But this isn't getting me any nearer to deciding what a small 'l' liberal is to do these days. Please note that small letter. I'll happily own up to being a woolly liberal, or a liberal woolly, but never yet any sort of Liberal (even if the Liberal Democrats are on the rise in York). But if a liberal is someone who believes in rights, fairness, equality, liberty and the rest, then I'm happy to hop up and watch events from the nearest, proudest fence.

YOU have to hand it to Yorkshire MEP Robert Goodwill. Well, the European Parliament certainly did - and he pocketed whatever he could get away with.

First, Mr Goodwill admits to profiting from his travel expenses. Then he makes this diddling appear to be an act of high principle. And after that, he plays the good guy by donating £1,000 to this newspaper's Hospice 2000 Appeal.

Never has anyone emerged smelling so sweetly after being discovered fiddling his expenses.