Nothing came of the Democrats’ pledge to avenge their 2000 presidential defeat by turning Jeb Bush, the President’s brother, out of the governor’s mansion in Florida. Almost as distressing must have been the elevation of Katherine Harris, the former Florida Secretary of State who was responsible for so many controversial decisions about dimpled chads, to the House of Representatives And some prominent Democrat names went down. There was the defeat of Walter Mondale, the former Vice-President, in Minnesota, the surprising failure of Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Bobby Kennedy’s daughter, in Maryland, and the vanquishing of Erskine Bowles, President Clinton’s chief of staff, by Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina.But the Republicans’ victories, sweet as they may be for them, are no cause for wider celebration. Suddenly all sorts of measures that could have been blocked in Congress can be pursued by the White House. As well as his tax cuts for the wealthy, Mr Bush can hope to see his conservative slate of judges for the Supreme Court approved and legislation to allow drilling for oil in Alaska’s wildlife refuge. He might try to relax business regulation, although in the light of Enron and other scandals that remains problematic. And his so-called Homeland Security programme will continue to assault the civil liberties of American citizens.Most dangerous of all, however, is what these elections mean for Mr Bush’s foreign policy.

This can be overstated, because few Democrats would in any case oppose the President at a time of war. But these results will undoubtedly embolden Mr Bush as he pushes the United Nations towards backing his plans for a war on Iraq. The incalculable damage that such a conflict would do to peace throughout the world, rather than the tally of governorships and Congressional seats, represents the true scale, and the real price, of the Democrats’ failure.. As soon as the organisers of the Miss World contest decided to hold their contest in Nigeria, they must have realised that there might be a mismatch between the lighthearted glitz of the competition and the situation for some women in the host country. In northern states of Nigeria, where Sharia law has recently been imposed, women are facing barbaric forms of injustice.

Last year the first sentence of stoning for adultery was handed down on Safiya Husseini. She was pardoned on a technicality, but now another woman, Amina Lawal, is living under sentence of death by stoning because she gave birth to a child after having sex with a man who promised to marry her. When her daughter, Wasila, is weaned, Amina has been told that she will be “buried up to her neck and pelted with heavy rocks until she dies”.The Miss World contestants who have decided not to go to Nigeria have realised that Amina Lawal’s experiences make the tussle for a paste crown and a tinsel sash look, at best, meaningless. The contestants from Denmark, Switzerland, Austria and Costa Rica have decided to pull out, and many others are apparently considering similar action. Sylvie Teller, who was to go as Miss France, said: “When a woman faces the most agonising death, there are more important things in life than winning a crown for being beautiful.”It is easy for sceptics to brush off this boycott. For a start, it is hard to give serious attention to anything to do with Miss World. The only people who do take the contest seriously are probably those who still see it as the purveyor of demeaning stereotypes; which hardly makes it the easiest context to mount a vanguard action on behalf of oppressed women.Most people, however, are unable to take the contest remotely seriously, seeing it merely as camp entertainment dressed up in absurd language about “beauty with a purpose”.