Gordon Brown has a better instinct for economic policy than he does for reform of the sex trade. There are unlikely to be problems with disorderly neighbourhoods in the Fife towns in which he grew up. In any case, his personal instincts are austere.
No surprise there; that generalisation would cover most politicians, though not all. When a Tory minister in the 60s, the late Lord Lampton was unapologetic about bedding two prostitutes at once – even after the News of the World exposed his proclivity.
But Brown's lack of knowledge or curiosity in this field of human experience means he relies heavily on the advice of two close colleagues, his deputy, Harriet Harman, and Jacqui Smith, whom he made the first woman home secretary.
Both have very firm views on prostitution. They think it wrong, would like to outlaw the purchase of sex and think that men have abused the power relationship for many centuries in this particular trade.
Hence this week's announcement by Smith that new laws are coming which will redress the balance. Men will be liable to a fine of up to £1,000 plus a criminal record for buying sex from a woman "controlled for another person's gain" – in other words, trafficked or pimped – even if the punter didn't know.
First-time kerb crawlers (as distinct from "persistent" ones already liable) can expect fines too. It will be made easier to close brothels for other than class A drug offences.
My understanding is that Brown listens carefully to his women colleagues, knows that women voters are hostile to prostitution (more so than men!) and is keen that they should generate discussion in the wider public arena and make their case.
If their campaign bombs then Brown will not force through legislation when Labour is heading into an election in 2010 (be sceptical about talk of a dash in 2009). The Tories would oppose such a bill and the Lib Dems say ministers should enforce the laws they've already got.
There has been discussion about this on radio, TV and in print. But today's papers seem curiously muted. I can't find the story at all in the Daily Mail, whose views are central to such debates in modern Britain. The paper leads today's edition on the latest "threat" to speeding motorists, a laddish choice.
Of course, the Smith blueprint that has emerged from a Home Office consultation – and a study issued this week – is itself a compromise. Harman said recently that she'd like to see paying for sex simply made illegal, as it has been in Sweden since 1999. Concentrating on the "sex slave" angle is a compromise formula to squeeze the trade – though police, the poor sods who will have to enforce it, fear that such a law will be hard to handle.
As a bloke I find it almost impossible to type that "pay for sex" sentence without thinking "Oh boy, do we all pay for it" even in the happiest of homes. But this is no place for gallows humour.
Sensible male Labour politicians advise me that we must concentrate harder and accept that women have got more of the blame for what goes wrong with sex down the millennia than they deserve - even those muscular wives with tiny husbands in the Angus McGill seaside postcards.
We do accept it and ask for whatever other offences we may have inadvertently committed to be taken into consideration. After all, Islamists may be pretty grisly on the gender agenda, but we were pretty grisly too until the very recent past.
Ministers who visited Sweden concluded that a ban is best because it's simple, but that British public opinion isn't ready yet. I seem to remember reading that one result is an increase in whoring next door in Norway. Decriminalisation, as in the Netherlands, hasn't cut the trade either, the travelling UK ministers noted.
Tricky, isn't it? In today's Guardian, Alan Travis reports that Acpo, the top coppers union, wants women to get more help to leave the game. There are an estimated 80,000 women working in the sex trade in Britain, an industry worth £1bn, with between 4% and 11% of men buying sex at some point.
Tough, well-organised prostitutes in bodies like the English Collective of Prostitutes challenge official data and what they regard as interference in their right to earn a living. I can imagine some of them muttering that they are of more use to society than the average politician – and better paid than the average journalist too. I suspect they're not typical of their trade.
The ECP disputes claims that vast numbers of prostitutes are women trafficked from developing countries in eastern Europe as well as beyond. I still marvel at the sheer numbers of women I saw on the roadside when driving north from Prague to Berlin a few years ago – though it has since been cleaned up. All big cities always have their red light districts. They strike me as deeply sad. But what do I know?
The question is how best to proceed? Sex is sex and demand is pretty inelastic. In Sunday's Observer, Baroness Warnock urged men who couldn't get sex for free to masturbate, which is not quite how it probably strikes the average punter. He may well have tried that option too, your ladyship, but feels like a night out.
Mrs White used to witness a lot of queues on Friday nights in her youth in King's Cross, Sydney (a once unsalubrious haunt much like London's Kings Cross until the Guardian moves there next month), queues mostly of young immigrant men whose womenfolk were still far away. It's always a problem: an imbalance of supply and demand.
"Was it £2 for six minutes or £6 for two minutes?" she asked herself when I raised the topic over breakfast. She wonders how the rape statistics are changing in Sweden – a good question to which I do not know the answer, though there are suggestions the sex trade there has gone underground again.
We should also worry about the laws of unintended consequences. America's foolish ban on the sale of alcohol in 1918 entrenched organised crime – the Mafia – in ways that have never since been eradicated. Drugs and prostitution rings followed when Prohibition was lifted in 1933. The criminalisation of drug use has hardly been a great success, though I have never favoured legalisation.
Rebalancing the power relationship between men and women so that both sides share the risks (let's put the pleasures to one side on this one) seems right and proper. It's just a question of moving with public opinion and not being counter-productive.
Over to you Gordon, when you've sorted out the economy.
