IF you were a convicted yob and had to do community service, it would surely be a pleasure to be kitted out with a nice new uniform.

I can't understand why there's all this talk about "humiliation". Part of the punishment for anti-social behaviour ought to be humiliation. It's the only thing that makes moral sense: if we deserve praise when we do well, we should be shamed when we do badly.

The chattering classes are always on about the need to remove "stigma" and "taboos". On the contrary, we should strengthen stigmas and taboos. To stigmatise something makes it plain and obvious. The consequences of delinquent behaviour should certainly be made obvious. And we had taboos to help protect us from harm.

When there was a strong taboo against premarital sex, there were fewer teenage pregnancies and far less of the massacre of the innocents made possible by the lax abortion laws.

Funny things uniforms. They're unacceptable as clothing for yobs on community service, and of course no one likes school uniform any longer - too posh. People in our enlightened times don't want to be "regimented". We know the value of personal expression and the individual's right to be different. So why do they all walk down my street in their baseball caps and designer trainers, chewing gum and gabbling idiocies into their mobile phones? "Individual personality" - don't make me laugh! Is that also why the hordes pay a fortune for lookalike kits in their team colours?

The truth is that nowadays some uniforms are cool and others uncool. It's apparent in my trade - priestcraft. The brainless modernising bishops have chucked out the old Bible and the real Prayer Book and replaced them with stuff that's godforsaken, unreadable and unprayable. Ah but, they haven't got rid of their gorgeous vestments, copes and mitres. Why not? Because these trimmings are far more important to them than mediating the truth of God to the people. Copes and mitres are personal status, matey - and don't you forget it.

Now we've got the same silliness about the choice of personal apparel among candidates for the Tory leadership. ("Tory" and "leadership" are not two words that go together these days, are they?). All the rage is for the new young Turks to go without ties. How appropriate! They've already gone so long without conservative policies; let them go without their neckties. But do they really want to be indistinguishable from the Blairites? They'll start saying "C'mon" and "Y'know" next and talking like some oik hanging around the municipal car park in Basildon.

Bring back uniforms. For the Tories these should be pinstripes and bowlers and on Saturdays in the Club tweeds and brogues. Candidates for the leadership should be made to smoke pipes, drink good claret and go in for a spot of foxhunting. They should never be seen at pop concerts or try to sound as if they know the name of anyone who appears on "reality" TV. Best of all, they should actually promote some conservative principles: the reduction of tax and public spending especially the iniquitous inheritance tax; the defence of British sovereignty against the dictatorial EU. They should adopt a new slogan: "Tough on Blair and tough on the causes of Blair".

*Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.