Labour won an historic victory last night – in the unlikely forum of the Oxford Union.

Only twice in the last 26 years has the governing party survived a confidence vote at the Union’s annual start of the academic year debate.

Shaun Woodward MP, Paul Murphy MP and I lined up against Ed Vaizey MP, Mark Oaten MP and Alan Duncan MP. But the real star was Jamie Susskind, a second year undergraduate who opened the debate for us. Mark my wordS – his is a name to watch.

Good news that the Government has given the go-ahead for a new UK Film centre as well as extensions to the Tate Modern and British Museum. Stonehenge is also going to get its much needed new visitor centre too.

Our cultural and creative industries have been a British success story in recent years. They have continued to grow strongly during the global downturn and will provide a lot of the future jobs and growth the country needs.

It would have been a terrible mistake to pull the rug on these projects. It would also have been economic madness. All Governments are supporting their economies at the moment to combat the global downturn and help build a strong recovery.

As the Financial Times’ respected economic commentator Samuel Brittan wrote today: “…demand must be supported by the monetary injections and budget deficits now in place and possibly more of them. The IMF is right to warn against the premature withdrawal of these stimuli. British Tory Bourbons who want a draconian belt-tightening policy either have not read these warnings or think they know better.

Ouch!

It was great to see Exeter’s performance during the downturn applauded by Friday’s Express and Echo. Unemployment low, business confidence up, house sales up and some exciting new projects underway near the airport and at Exeter University.

All this would be put at risk if we cut this investment now, as the Conservatives advocate. So would the big improvements we’ve seen in Exeter schools and the local NHS. So, come on city, keep biting back!

It is fascinating to watch how Cameron has dithered since Ireland emphatically voted yes in the Lisbon Treaty referendum.

They have promised to “not let things rest there”.

But British businesses and companies in Exeter that trade in Europe want to know what that means. Would the Conservatives plunge Britain into a futile political and economic war with our closest political allies and trading partners? That is the implication of their promise “not to let things rest”.

Or would they simply take us to the margins of Europe and then the exit door, which would be disastrous for UK companies? We need to know.

It says a great deal about the futility of the Tories’ obsessive Europhobia that people who should be their natural allies - Angela Merkel just re-elected and strengthened in Germany, Nicholas Sarkozy in France and Europe’s other mainstream conservatives - won’t even talk to Cameron and his crew.

Instead the Tories have their little bunch of dodgy fringe elements as their only friends in the EU.

The International Monetary Fund has upgraded its growth forecast for the UK next year and the Economist’s latest indicators show our economy will have shrunk less during the downturn than Germany’s and America’s and our unemployment rate is and will remain lower.

So much for the Tories’ claim this is a UK downturn. If we’d followed their advice and taken money out of the economy already, our recession would have been longer and deeper and our jobless rate far worse.

Instead of discussing any of this during the Labour Party conference all the media were interested in was talking about themselves - the Sun and Andrew Marr. Such self indulgent trivialisation of our political discourse!