Not that it's any of my business who the Democratic Party picks for its presidential candidate, but I just knew they'd got the right chap when I read a report this week of a speech by Richard Danzig, who served as Navy Secretary to President Clinton and is now a foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama.

Addressing the Centre for New American Security in Washington, Danzig invoked as a “fundamental text” for the aspiring diplomat A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh, emphasising the need for the US to adapt its foreign policy in the Middle East by reading the opening lines of that great work: “Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it...”

Blimey. Now I suppose it is possible that here in the Mother of Parliaments, our representatives have been exhibiting their cultural hinterlands with equal wit and style, bandying references to Little House on the Prairie and Eloise with a learned fluency that has somehow been overlooked by the parliamentary sketchwriters. Flicking through Hansard, I note several peers, in the course of a debate on the Grey Squirrel Problem, displaying an easy familiarity with The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin in particular and the works of Beatrix Potter in general (especially those dealing with troublesome rural vermin - Mr Toad, Tommy Brock, and so on) that bespeaks long hours of earnest study at the nursery fireside. Lord Chorley even claimed to have met the author, having been taken to tea with her when “unfortunately, I was at an age when Biggles was much more interesting to me than Peter Rabbit or Squirrel Nutkin”. Doh!

Anyway, the more I think about it, the more it strikes me that the distinctly jejune quality of parliamentary debate could be vastly enriched by study of our great national treasury of children's literature. Not that we are likely in the immediate future to match the exhilaration of current American political discourse, but surely anything is better than listening to the Shadow Chancellor claim for the zillionth

time (amazing how he contrives to make the phrase sound, with every repetition, as though it has just this second popped new-minted into his head) that the Prime Minister failed to “mend the roof when the sun was shining”.

So, pay attention, class. Sit down, Darling, and stop fidgeting. And you, Brown, kindly refrain from gnawing your nails. There will be a short test afterwards and anyone who fails will have to stay behind and write lines. Here are your set texts:

HM Treasury: The Tale of Ginger and Pickles, by Beatrix Potter. In which Ginger, a yellow tomcat, and Pickles, a terrier, get into difficulties while running a village shop: “Ginger and Pickles gave unlimited credit. Now the meaning of ‘credit' is this - when a customer buys a bar of soap, instead of the customer pulling out a purse and paying for it, she says she will pay another time. And Pickles makes a low bow and says, ‘With pleasure, madam,' and it is written down in a book. The customers come again and again, and buy quantities ... but there is no money in what is called ‘the till'.”

Department for Children, Schools and Families: The Family from One End Street, by Eve Garnett. In which the poor but honest Ruggles family of Otwell-on-the-Ouse, consisting of Mr Josiah Ruggles, a dustman, his wife Rosie, a washerwoman, and their seven children, is precipitated into anguished reflection on the economic injustices of selective education when the second daughter, Kate, takes the 11-plus exam and wins a scholarship to the local grammar school. “I know it's difficult, Mrs Ruggles,” wheedles Kate's primary school teacher, “but I hope you won't refuse the scholarship - Kate's a very bright child indeed. I'd like to see her have every chance...”

Department for Transport: The Railway Children, by E. Nesbit. In which Bobbie asks Bill the engine driver to mend her brother's broken toy steam train, on the ground that “everybody that has anything to do with railways is so kind and good”. Even if the 11.54 does run a little late one important September morning...

Ministry of Justice: The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. In which Toad finds himself up before the beak on a Twoc-ing rap. “To my mind,” observed the chairman of the bench of magistrates cheerfully, “the only difficulty that presents itself in this otherwise very clear case is, how we can possibly make it sufficiently hot for the incorrigible rogue and hardened ruffian whom we see cowering in the dock before us. Mr Clerk, will you tell us, please, what is the very stiffest penalty we can impose? Without, of course, giving the prisoner the benefit of any doubt, because there isn't any.”

I could go on. Lord, I could go on. Directing the Home Office to read E. Nesbit's The Would-be-Goods on the problem of absent parents and their feral children, and the Foreign Office to consult Noel Langley's peerless comedy The Land of Green Ginger on Eastern diplomacy. (“A Little Hardship is a Great Builder of Character,” remarks the narrator, a maxim of which the Minister of State, Lord Malloch-Brown, may need no reminder.) But La! I have neither time nor space. Though I'll be watching with even greater interest than usual those annual lists of the books that MPs claim to be taking with them on their summer holidays.

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