APRIL may be the cruellest month, as TS Eliot said, but March is shaping up to be the stupidest.

First we had climate-change protestor Leila Deen throwing green custard over business secretary Lord Mandelson.

"The thing I really wanted to do was show how slimy he was and how the only thing that was green about him was the slime coursing through his veins," she said afterwards, with logic that would shame a five-year-old.

Later, in a piece for Labourlist, she offered a more grandiose account of what she had achieved.

"Typically for a man far too used to the comforts of patriarchy, as I approached him, Mandelson's condescending smile conveyed his expectation of little more than a simpering compliment coming his way," she wrote. "The majority of journalists did not seem to know how to respond. Here was a well-dressed, dare I say attractive, state school, middle class woman confronting the unelected Lord Mandelson and questioning his right to take a political platform on climate change."

Right. So `sliming' a leading politician, and the coverage that gets, is actually a feminist issue. And a class issue. And a state-versus-private school issue. And here was me thinking it was just a juvenile stunt.

Then we had a group from the No Borders network invading the Oldham offices of Phil Woolas, the immigration minister. They came, they shouted, they stuck stickers on the walls. And what important message did those stickers carry? "More pies for Woolas".

This was not, it turns out, a dig at the minister's waistline. It was a reference to October last year, when the group threw a custard pie in his face.

Mr Woolas was relaxed about the latest incident. "It was all fairly cordial and over in half an hour," he said.

He could afford to be so blasé. The attack seemed more like a comic interlude than a serious political protest.

That's the problem with these things. On the one hand, I can understand the temptation. The demands of 24-hour news channels means the potential publicity for highly unusual, highly visual protests has never been greater. Moreover in a multimedia age, even if you can't get the news professionals there with their cameras, you can simply take your own broadcast-quality footage on a mobile phone.

Anyone with a tin of custard, imagination and nerve can get publicity. What remains as difficult as ever is controlling the publicity you get. Protestors like Ms Deen may end up on TV screens across the world, but their arguments generally do not. She and her ilk are destined to be remembered not as a serious political voice but as the pie-flingers, the clowns, the light relief from more weighty matters of state. They are cementing their places on the fringes of the debate.

That's not to say that there is no place for direct protest. Britain has a proud tradition of such. But there is a difference between what Ms Deen did and, say, Emily Davison throwing herself under the King's horse, or 80,000 gathering at St Peter's Fields to call for the vote, or millions marching through London against the war with Iraq. It is a difference of scale, or tone, or more often both. Ms Deen is not part of this tradition. Her lineage includes Jeremy Beadle, Dom Joly and Ashton Kutcher.

If the current crop of protestors really want to be part of the political agenda, rather than members of the entertainment industry, they would be better served concentrating their fire elsewhere.

Here's one suggestion, drawn from the advent of the internet and the disillusionment with, and apathy towards, modern British politics: campaign for electoral reform. Make it the single most pressing issue of the day.

Earlier this month, millionaire businessman Sir Paul Judge launched the Jury Team. Its stated aim is to clean up politics by giving everyone the financial backing they need to stand for parliament. It plans to put up 70 candidates at this year's European elections. And it is destined to fail. Why? Because the electoral system we have is virtually closed to outsiders. Millions of people will be sympathetic to the Jury Team's complaints about modern-day politics, and modern-day politicians. But they won't vote for it, precisely because they believe their votes will be wasted if they do. It is a classic vicious circle.

The world is changing rapidly. The structure of British politics remains basically unchanged for decades, if not centuries.

The internet is giving us more and more voices and perspectives, and making it easier - and infinitely cheaper - to share information. In the media, for example, national newspapers can no longer assume their pronouncements will be taken as authoritative.

They face unprecedented scrutiny from an army of amateur rivals on the web. This forces them to maintain and improve quality. They have to earn trust every day.

Politics is not like that. Come polling day, most people's pencils will still hover over two or at most three boxes before their make their cross. Already that feels old-fashioned. Who's to say, in a few years time, it won't seem positively archaic?

So there you go, Ms Deen. Fight that fight first. It's simple, topical, logical, and could unite a huge number of under-represented groups like yours.

Only please, please find a way of arguing for it that is more constructive than throwing green gunge like a chimp in a zoo.

Leila Deen on Labourlist: http://tinyurl.com/cko4e8 The Jury Team: http://www.juryteam.org David Ottewell's blog: blogs.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/politics