On Wednesday, Clare Short stood up in the Commons with a reasonable expectation of being asked about the great issues which fill the days of her International Development Department. The bloodbath in the Middle East was topical, as was the war in the Congo, and famine, drought and flood. Yet none of these man-made disasters disturbed Conservative MPs. They wanted to get down to the real business of shouting about sugar. When the conversation was in danger of turning to such trivial matters as whether aid should be given to kleptomaniac dictators, James Paice interrupted with a 'May I take the Right Hon lady back to the issue of sugar?' When the religious war in Sudan, which has cost 1,500,000 lives, was raised, Cheryl Gillan butted in with 'Of the 48 least and less-developed countries, 21 produce sugar, and Sudan has the largest sugar production among them'.  A faintly bewildered Short sat down and Tony Blair took the floor to be confronted by another sweet-toothed Tory. John Greenway wasted one of the few opportunities he will get in his career to interrogate the Prime Minister by hitting him with a sugar question. Blair did not quite reply 'Sugar? Come again?' but few would have blamed him if he had.  The Conservatives addressed the PM and Short in the concerned, simpering tone of the new Portilloised party. Caribbean islands faced devastation and impoverishment, they warned, and for a moment a cynic could be convinced that they truly cared about the plight of the Third World. It is always worth counting your fingers after a compassionate Conservative has squeezed your hand. In this instance, the reckoning shows that the Conservatives have allied with sugar interests and the most pampered farmers in Europe in an attempt to destroy an initiative to give back to the poorest people on the planet a little of the money we screw from them. They may yet succeed.  The World Trade Organisation can now meet only behind regiments of riot police because of the disgust at how the wretched of the Earth are treated. The free trade enforced by the Washington consensus flows in one direction. The poor must open their markets to Western corporations, but the favour is rarely returned.  Oxfam estimates that backward countries lose $700 billion (460bn) a year because of tariffs and barriers in Europe, North America and Japan. Third World farmers suffer most, not only from the formal charges but from the constraints health faddism brings. The European Union insists that dairy products, for example, must come from cows which have been mechanically milked and thus bans virtually every Indian smallholder from exporting.  The WTO has lived up to its reputation for being a protection racket for the wealthy and done nothing. Its failure   provoked Pascal Lamy, the European Trade Commissioner, to be generous to the South. The poorest 48 countries, mainly in Africa, should have unrestricted access to EU markets, he decided. There would be no tariffs and no quotas. They would be free to sell any product except arms.  As Short herself admits, the largess from Brussels will not change the world. The 600 million people living in the 48 nations have an average annual income of 191 - or 52 pence a day. Their importing and exporting accounts for a mere   0.4 per cent of world trade. As far as global capitalism is concerned, they might as well be dead - and many soon will be.  Nevertheless, Lamy's gesture would at least bring benefits to a few and end the enormous hypocrisy of a 'free' market which becomes very restrictive indeed when the traders and producers have black or brown skins. Unfortunately, he will probably be defeated by the power of the ferocious sugar lobby.  There is no reason why Europe needs to grow sugar beet rather than import sugar cane from the Tropics. In the Napoleonic and First and Second World Wars, beet could be presented as a vital resource which would help frustrate a blockade.  Any conceivable modern war will either be nuclear and over pretty quickly or a guerrilla conflict which will not close the ports. Yet through production-limiting quotas, minimum prices for farmers and import restrictions, European sugar business continues to demand and receive formidable protection. The prices for consumers and industry are always twice and often three times as high as world prices.  Only the Caribbean plantations - built on slavery, the sugar industry's first contribution to a global market - are allowed to export without restriction, hence the Tory predictions of impoverishment and the insistence of the Tate &amp; Lyle press office that journalists should concentrate on the threat to the West Indies. Neither says that Lamy merely wants to accord the poorest countries the same rights as the Caribbean. He is not trying to take West Indian rights away.  Anyone who believes that the Conservatives are motivated by altruism should look at who is behind the campaign. The National Farmers Union and British Sugar, the makers of Silver Spoon, are lobbying Parliament hard. The thought of any concession to impoverished countries is intolerable.  They won't get anywhere in Britain if Blair stands firm, although I accept that that is always a giant 'if'. But the Tories and the industry are part of a pan-European movement which has a good chance of persuading the EU to forget about Lamy's benevolence, probably with the aid a French or German veto.  The Third World and consumers will still be ripped off, but at least the Conservative Party will have re-established its role as clients of the sugar industry. From 1945 onwards, Tate &amp; Lyle was a generous corporate sponsor. In 1996, with the party heading for defeat, the company spread its bets in a tripartisan fashion by funding New Labour and the Liberal Democrats as well as their traditional friends.  This year, Michael Portillo rebuilt bridges when he promised to abolish Labour taxes on companies which move money offshore, after Tate &amp; Lyle, among others, had complained of the pain it would suffer from being made to pay its way. Bowen Wells, the Tory chairman of the International Development Committee, was an adviser to Michael Ashcroft, the offshore banker whose donations to the party brought him a peerage. Welles lobbied on Tate &amp; Lyle's behalf. The company enjoyed the indulgent tax benefits offered by Ashcroft's Bank of Belize. Wells joined the assault on Short in the Commons last week.  All of which puts Conservative complaints about military cooperation in Europe into perspective. Although the party is always ready to denounce real and imaginary Euromadness, scepticism has its limits. It will fight to the last ditch to defend the most pernicious Europrivileges for its supporters regardless of the consequences for an electorate and an impoverished South which  must pay for them.   Cardinal Irvine, the Lord High Chancellor of all England, art collector, Blair placeman and millionaire corporate lawyer, cuts a faintly preposterous figure when he poses as a working-class hero.  For all his unsuitability for the role, he explains that cuts in legal aid to the poorest as an act of class war against 'fat cat' lawyers on behalf of the oppressed masses rather than an assault on the welfare state. In September he took the cant of pseudo-populism further when he effectively banned defendants without means from being represented by Queen's Counsel, the most distinguished advocates. Even when they are up against a murder charge and a mandatory life sentence, they must now make do with junior barristers. Once again, meanness was justified as a legitimate defence against the greed of grasping lawyers.  As I noted the other week, Irvine was denying QCs to the swinish multitude while using public money to hire a QC to defend his reputation. What I did not realise was how much money was being spent on saving His Eminence's face.  Irvine is appealing against an employment tribunal ruling that he was guilty of indirect sex discrimination when he appointed Garry Hart as his special adviser. Hart, who worked for the enormously expensive City law firm, Herbert Smith, would push large briefs in Irvine's direction, when the Lord Chancellor was one of the fattest felines at the Bar.  Hart is the godfather of the PM's daughter and, what with one thing and another, you can see why the Lord Chancellor was fond of him.  To overturn the tribunal's impertinent rulings that unadvertised jobs and secret appointments guarantee discrimination, Irvine has hired Sir Sydney Kentridge QC, one of the best lawyers in London. Sir Sydney costs 500 an hour (135 times the minimum wage). If he is working long hours, he offers a discount. You can book his services from dawn to dusk and beyond for a mere 5,000 a day.  Sir Sydney will be assisted by Richard McManus QC, who charges a paltry 250 an hour. Just as one Jag is not enough for Prescott, one QC is not enough for Irvine - although it is one too many for the poor.