Leading Article: The gloves come off in the playground scrap

Hark, amid the sound of Christmas sleigh-bells comes the sound of playground bickering. That, at least, will be the verdict of most of the public on this week's wrangles at Westminster. The fact that voting agreements between the political parties broke down to recriminations from all sides will seem to most people like just another boys' game.

But the parliamentary games that politicians play are not all to be sneered at. It would be easy to recoil in squeamish distaste at the tactics that these professional politicians are starting to exploit. But we cannot dismiss out of hand the escapades this week. Events at Westminster reflect important and real political tensions between the parties that must stand before us next year and ask for our votes.

On the surface, the playground analogy is rather appealing. Parliament is run most of the time according to unspoken, unwritten rules that everyone obeys. A certain amount of agreement and co-operation between the parties is essential if anything is to be done, and if MPs are not to waste their time and energy running pointless circles around each other. "Pairing" is one of those rituals: parties match their MPs who want to miss the vote, so absent votes cancel each other out. Such rituals are necessary to oil the parliamentary process.

But, as the election draws closer, those agreements are grinding down. On Monday night the Conservatives won the vote by more than expected, by deceiving the opposition parties about how many Tory MPs would be absent. Caught red-handed, ministers cheerily denied everything and muddied the waters by making false accusations against Labour's whips in return. Not surprisingly, in response, Labour and the Liberal Democrats have announced that they will not be pairing MPs with absent Tories in the new year. Tit for predictable tat.

The animosity is personal, too. The bi-weekly dispatch box encounters between Tony Blair and John Major have taken on a vitriolic tone in recent weeks. The sneering tone with which the Prime Minister patronises and accuses the Labour leader is undignified. Contempt oozes from every pore. But Mr Major can't quite carry it off. Admonishing Mr Blair for being unable to "understand the situation on beef", for example, is rich coming from a Government that has changed direction on beef so many times that none of us are sure what the Government is up to - if it knows itself.

But when all is said and done, it does seem childish, all this indignation and cheating. Recounting their squabbles, the politicians seem like over- excited children, screaming because the end of the game is in sight. Don't be misled. It's serious. Underlying the spat are two important facts: the Government lost its majority in Parliament this week, and the Conservative Party is too fractured and fractious to hold together reliably under pressure. The loss of its majority reflects the public sentiment. The fractures in the party reveal tensions and problems in their ability to run an effective Government. These are not trivial troubles; they go to the heart of politics.

In the circumstances, an opposition party that truly believes in itself and its ability to govern has a responsibility to try to bring the Government down at the earliest opportunity. And a party that really thinks - as Labour claims to do - that it has a better vision for the country, should not flinch from parliamentary tactics that help to win the wider battle.

If that means dragging debates on into the middle of the night, holding votes at strange hours, proposing sabotage amendments, and doing whatever it takes to harry and harass ministers into making mistakes, then so be it. These are the circumstances in which that master of parliamentary procedure, Dennis Skinner, should really come into his own.

There is nothing unfair or underhand about this kind of strategy. If John Major's government proved cool-headed, calm and competent, an opposition guerrilla war would have little impact. All Labour and the Liberal Democrats would achieve is pressure on existing weaknesses and strains within the Government, legitimately testing its real mettle in difficult times.

That is what the Opposition should be doing - but it is not. Instead, this week the Government fired the first shots. When battle intensified at the personal and party level, it was the Tories wot started it. Labour and the Liberal Democrats were too squeamish to begin the fight, too ready to pull punches, too unwilling to go for the Government's throat. Maybe now things will be different. Maybe the startling deceit and brazen lies by the Conservative whips' office will provoke the Opposition into a little ferocity. Perhaps Mr Major's patronising personal attacks will inspire a little fury in Tony Blair. Not before time. Labour needs to learn how to play parliamentary hard ball to demonstrate to all of us that it has the appetite for power, and deserves to govern.

All these macho metaphors are unfortunate. We use them with great self- consciousness and a strong awareness that important issues can get lost in the heat of the fight. Parties which are sensitive to voters will avoid taking guerrilla tactics on to the streets, knowing that none of this goes down well with voters already badly disaffected with yah-boo politics. Nevertheless, politicians cannot stick to pleasant abstract chats with voters while ignoring the unpleasant realities of the parliamentary cockpit. Substantive arguments about different policies and priorities are important. But until our present political system is reformed, Parliament remains the theatre in which those differences are fought out. In the end, this battle matters, because two party leaders are fighting for the right to decide which one determines our national future on one of the biggest issues of the day: our future in Europe. Parliament, whether we like it or not, is the proving ground.