There’s a new election campaign poster up on my home turf of Portslade. This one is different from the rest as it’s one for the Liberal Democrats.

This set a bell ringing. Some of you may have read this post describing a canvassing visit my partner and I had last Sunday from New Labour candidate, Celia Barlow.

During her visit, Celia told us that Paul Elgood, the Liberal Democrat candidate, was not campaigning in Hove and Portslade but instead helping in the Lewes constituency.

The appearance of the poster seems to contradict this so I emailed the Liberal Democrat campaign team for confirmation. Paul Elgood emailed me himself unequivocally denying what Celia had said:

We are working hard in this constituency and fighting for every Lib Dem vote. Lewes is a held seat for the Lib Dems and they don’t need outside help, as we have to aim to increase the vote and win in other constituencies. I am working flat out here and aim to double the vote.

Celia’s comments are very dishonest.

Paul also left a comment to that effect on this blog here.

Celia’s assertion was also contradicted in this article about the Hove constituency on the politics.co.uk website last Monday, which said:

In 2001, the 3,800 people who voted Liberal Democrat were the difference between Labour on 19,000 and the Conservatives on 16,000. This time round, Elgood aims to double the Liberal Democrat vote; if he can do so, he will wipe out Labour’s majority, and the Lib Dem vote will determine the outcome of the election.

He says the Liberal Democrats are putting in “triple, quadruple” the resources they put into previous elections and will be fighting for every vote in a way they never have before. That will allow them to pick up on what he calls a “groundswell” of feeling among groups - pensioners, the intelligentsia, students, people opposed to the war in Iraq - who are dissatisfied with Labour but not willing to turn to the Conservatives.

“In Hove, they can afford to have a protest, a by-election style protest and I think that’ll come to us in big numbers,” he says.

So which is it? The New Labour candidate says the Liberal Democrats aren’t campaigning in Hove. The Liberal Democrat candidate says emphatically that they are.

I spoke to someone in the Electoral Services department at Brighton & Hove City council about it. I didn’t name any names, simply saying, “A candidate said this about another candidate who subsequently denied it.” Their response was interesting.

Nominations for candidates wishing to stand in the constituency do not close until April 19. Until that date nobody is officially standing at the election in Hove. You can campaign even if you are not yet officially standing. If something similar were to happen after April 19 Electoral Services would take the matter in hand but only to refer it to their senior contact at the party against who the accusation has been made. But where does this leave Celia’s assertion that Paul Elgood is not campaigning?

I emailed Celia twice this week, once on Wednesday and yesterday, where I put my cards on the table, explained who I was and what I intended to do:

I shall be looking to write about this matter on my site later today. I realise you must be extremely busy with your camapign but I want to give you the right of reply and would be grateful for a comment from you or your agent to add the proper balance.

I received a reply today in which she said:

Sorry about the delay in replying. As you say I am very busy. However, following your email I contacted Paul Elgood. I realised I was misinformed and I have apologised to him.

I’d be very interested to know who misinformed Celia and why. This erroneous impression has come from somewhere either through a misunderstanding or, possibly, something more malicious. I also wonder if campaigns can afford for their candidates to be misinformed in this way. Rival camps are looking to score big points - witness the furore over Ed Matts and his doctored photos.

Now, I realise that the anti-New Labour sentiment expressed on this weblog, and my association with the tactical-voting campaign Backing Blair might tarnish me in the eyes of some in this matter. A casual scroll through the site though will tell you that I enjoy giving the Tories stick with as much, if not more, relish than I do New Labour. When Blair goes, I’ll be a Labour voter again.

Despite my “affiliation”, another casual scroll will show you that my coverage of the election in Hove so far has been even-handed: here, here, here, here and here.

So that said, I’m not grinding an axe here. But this is a marginal constituency where the incumbent party has a shaky majority. Telling voters, without checking the veracity of what we now know to be just a rumour, that a rival party isn’t bothering to campaign is misleading, wrong and potentially damaging to that rival campaign.

Can we be expected to believe that Celia was unaware of the impact her words might have on both the views of floating voters and, by extension, both her and the Liberal Democrat’s election campaigns?

How many other people told the same might think: “If they can’t be bothered to campaign, why should I bother to vote for them?” And how is this impression to be corrected? Don’t New Labour have big enough issues on trust without this happening on the doorstep?

I’d be chasing this just as much if such a comment had come from another party’s candidate. I dropped my psuedonym on this blog to prove I stand by what I’ve written here - so there can be no accusations of me hiding anything and my dealings with the parties involved cannot be construed as anything else other than above board.

This isn’t about is trying to land a blow on an election candidate with who I don’t agree. This is about fair play and, without trying to sound grand, the democratic process.

Carrots

The Times: Labour set up a secret inquiry into ending first past the post

THE Government admitted last night that it had secretly begun a review into an alternative to the current first-past-the-post system, the “unfairness�? of which threatens to be laid bare in the election.

An unattributed story in a Murdoch newspaper. Hmmmm. This kind of stuff is what long grass was invented for.

***
The Guardian: Robin Cook - Blair has delivered on some of the left’s historic demands

I keep reading that the voters complain that the political parties are all the same. I am haunted by the fear that some electors will only be convinced that they are radically different if they end up with a Conservative government that will, with gusto, set about proving just what a big difference there is. Labour’s manifesto has set out a progressive agenda of social justice and job opportunity radically different from a Tory party that simultaneously dangles the hope of tax cuts and whips up the fear of immigration. Nobody now can reasonably complain that they have not been given a choice. And old Labour sympathisers can back this government not through gritted teeth but with enthusiasm.

From a Labour MP in a Labour supporting newspaper. Back in April 2001, the then Guardian columnist and comedian, Jeremy Hardy, in his last column for the paper said:

In any event, I was given the option of staying on until the election but also told that I shouldn’t use the column as a platform for the Socialist Alliance. Since the fact of the Socialist Alliance and the Scottish Socialist party putting up candidates is the only interesting thing about the election, that struck me as a bit of a limitation; and since I’m away for Easter, I may as well sign off now.

Hardy, Socialist Alliance. Cook, New Labour. Hardy, Socialist Alliance. Cook, New Labour.

I’d recommend reading Hardy’s piece in it’s entirety because even though it’s five years old, it could have been written this week:

Those who are enjoying power accuse us malcontents of being compulsively oppositional. “Why are you people always so angry?” they ask. We should reply: “Because there is so much to be angry about and the Body Snatchers haven’t got us yet”, but I’m afraid that they would counter with: “Our time has arrived, it is pointless to resist.” I don’t know what is more distressing, the triumphalism of those who crow that they’ve won, or the fact that so many of them would never have settled for such a victory a few short years ago. At least half of the government’s media supplicants would have railed in fury if the last government had done the things they tolerate from Labour.

The Tories are not going to get back in. The people who say they might are mostly Labour loyalists, who are perhaps waiting to surprise us with some newly emerging piece of venality. Perhaps Robert Maxwell is alive. But the Tories won’t win. Labour will not even be forced into a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, which in any case wouldn’t drag the government further to the right. Liberals and even Greens undergo some strange conversions when in power, it’s true; and Lib Dem councils have a pretty bad track record. But a Lib-Lab coalition government is unlikely, and I very much doubt whether it would be more corporate-friendly, racist and authoritarian than this one.

Anyway, Hardy is just some uppity Left-wing comedian who supported a fringe party. Robin Cook is a former cabinet minister who might be on the way back in if he plays his cards right (bless him, he didn’t mention Iraq once this week in his column). You can see the Guardian’s dilemma.

***
BBC News: Apology over police officer death

Labour election chief Alan Milburn has apologised for the death of a policeman killed by ricin plotter Kamel Bourgass.

I might have missed some of the details in this case but I’m pretty sure Alan Milburn didn’t stab DC Stephen Oake. Neither was he a member of the asylum system that lost track of Bourgass. I’m at a loss as to why a notorious New Labour hardman would be issuing such a apology, I really am.

***
Sticks

The story about British troops abroad being denied their vote is gaining some traction:

The Independent: MoD error denies thousands of troops the vote
BBC News: Delay ‘risks Armed Forces votes’

***
The Guardian: Blair at centre of new row over postal votes

Tony Blair is promoting his party’s “farming” of postal vote applications in a national mailshot which defies advice from returning officers that there should be no third party involvement in the process.

Always one to lead by example, that one. MMR, anybody? To be fair though, he’s not the only one:

Mr Blair is not alone in acting contrary to their advice. Michael Howard, in a personal letter to voters, asks them to return their application forms to a national party centre in Dartford, Kent, while Charles Kennedy requests electors to return the forms to the party’s local offices.

So far, so politics. But this from the Times might make you sit up:

The Times has learnt that the Government has, for the first time in a general election, invited international observers to monitor the last week of the campaign. The Warsaw-based Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights will decide in the next two days whether to accept the invitation. “We don’t investigate and we would not micromanage the police, but postal voting will be looked at if we accept,” a spokeswoman said.

International observers. There you have it. A government famous for its gusto in exporting democracy to the rest of the world has invited international observers to monitor its own election. I just hope at the end of it, they don’t say, as if we were some Middle Eastern or Africam basket-case, “Well, there were problems but on the whole we feel the election was largely free and fair.”

The Labour Party: Hain and Morgan launch manifesto for a world-beating Wales

Mr Hain said: “Wales has a clear choice on May 5th. We can go forward with the strong Labour team or we can go back to being ruled by the Tories. Labour promises even better public services, a stronger economy and safer streets.

“But this can only be delivered if people turn out to vote Labour. I’m sounding an alarm for Wales today: you will only get a Labour Government if you vote for a Labour Government. This isn’t a time to gamble. Don’t have a flutter on your future. A vote for Plaid or the Liberals could let the Tories in by the back door.

Poor Peter. Can you see him standing there, dying inside a little bit more each time he has to say, “…let the Tories in by the back door”? Do you think, as the weasel words drip from his mouth, he pictures his younger self digging up cricket pitches, marching against tyranny and risking his life for a better world? Does his grin then fade slightly and his eyes shine for a moment?

The Back Door Count currently stands at: 5.

Today’s election blogging roundup is up.

Please send any links you’d like included in tomorrow’s roundup to generalelection@gmail.com. But save all your best stuff for next Tuesday when I’ll be in the chair again.

If your day tomorrow is spent not reading this breakdown of the runners and riders in the election by Jim Bliss, it will be a day wasted.

A contender for the best blog post of the election campaign so far?

Another day, another “comedy” spam email from John O’Farrell on behalf of New Labour. This time he’s exhorting the faithful to “Let’s Keep It Labour Weekend”, a mass mobilisation of activists:

Sometimes being a Labour Party activist can be a lonely occupation. The same few party members discussing item three on the agenda; “How can we get more people to come to meetings?” It’s no different in the Cabinet; Tony Blair sits there with a handful of ministers and lots of empty chairs and says “Um, let’s just give it a few more minutes and see if anyone else turns up.”

But this weekend you could be one of thousands of Labour supporters across the country descending on Labour’s key seats. This looks set to be an even greater mass mobilisation of political activists than the rush to join Robert Kilroy-Silk’s Veritas Party. Think of Mao’s long march; think of the unemployed walking from Jarrow.

Think of Mao’s long march? OK, I will:

The Long March was a massive military retreat undertaken by the Chinese Communist Army to evade the pursuit of the Kuomintang army. The Communist Army of the Chinese Soviet Republic, led by Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, was on the brink of complete annihilation by Chiang Kai-Shek’s troops in Jiangxi Province in October 1934. The communists escaped in circling retreat to the north which ultimately covered some 8000km (4960 miles) over 370 days. The route branched through some of the most difficult terrain of western China and arrived 9600km (5952 miles) west, then north, to Shaanxi. (In 2003, Ed Jocelyn and Andy McEwan retraced the route in 384 days and estimated it was about 6000 km (3700 miles) long.

All along the way, the Communist Army confiscated property and weapons from local warlords and landlords, while recruiting peasants and the poor. Nevertheless, only some 20,000 out of about 90,000 soldiers who had started the march ultimately made it to the final destination of Yan’an in 1935. A variety of setbacks contributed to the loss including fatigue, hunger, coldness, sickness, desertion, and military losses.

Of course, Mao Zedong, or Mao Tse-Tung as he’s sometimes better known, was hailed as a great leader who brought sweeping reforms to his country. He was famous for his Little Red Book. And he caused the deaths of a great many people.

Is that what O’Farrell means when he says, “think of Mao’s long march”?

Tim Ireland gives a rallying cry.

In his Media Diary for the Independent on Monday, Matthew Norman mused the folowing:

With three-and-a-bit weeks to go, now seems the time to pose this vital question: when Mr Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell and the gang decide to unleash the flammed-up terrorism scare, where will they place it? Those who saw last week’s Newsnight item featuring the American focus groupie Frank Luntz will have been struck by one finding. Mr Luntz went to marginal Milton Keynes to ask floaters for their thoughts, and the issue on which they gave the PM his best score was decisiveness in the face of a security crisis. Doubtless Labour’s internal polling shows the same thing, which strongly suggests that a little judicious scaremongering is on the cards. A message from Bin Laden along the lines of his US intervention would certainly help, but Ossie can hardly be relied upon to ride to the rescue. And while sending the tanks to Heathrow for no apparent reason would have visual impact, it lacks a certain freshness. What’s needed, then, is a front-page splash calculated to allow an ashen Mr Blair to remind us that, while the intelligence is “non-specific”, we live in the face of “a unique threat to our way of life”, and that he alone can be trusted to preserve it. But where to plant this potentially fruitful tree? The Times and The Observer are close allies, but at times of electoral emergency No 10 would look for maximum impact, which means a tabloid. The Mirror, recent home to a moving hand-written note from the PM, seems an obvious choice, but that paper already nestles snugly in his pocket. So the smart money is on The Sun, which is suffering an unaccustomed bout of indecision as to whom to support. A world exclusive carrying the byline of Trevor Kavanagh, and the headline: “PM: Don’t Panic, Don’t Panic … But Without Me You’re Dooooomed!”, packed with dark if nebulous hints at an imminent atrocity would shepherd credulous voters back into the fold. We look forward to reading it.

Is this what Norman was looking for…?

The Sun: HE WANTED YOU DEAD

COP killer Kamel Bourgass was yesterday unmasked as Osama Bin Laden’s master poisoner — with a mission to murder as many Britons as possible.

An Al-Qaeda poisoner? In London?* Who can save us? How about the Safety Elephant…

Manchester Evening News: Storm over the killer left at large

Mr Clarke said the case highlighted the need for identity cards, along with stronger borders to deal with migration issues.

How close did we come to armageddon? The newspapers speculate. Keep an eye on the Al-Qaeda connection…

The Mirror: THE TOXIC TERRORIST

Algerian Kamel Bourgass, 31 - a suspected al-Qaeda member - was “prime mover” of a cell which plotted to produce ricin, cyanide and botulinum for holy war. The poisons were to be smeared on car door handles, used in spray form or to contaminate supermarket products.

The Mail: Asylum ‘chaos’ allowed ricin plotter to kill

The Government’s “chaotic” asylum policy allowed an Al Qaeda terrorist to plot a deadly ricin campaign and murder Detective Constable Stephen Oake, the Conservatives have claimed.

ITV.com: Al-Qaeda terrorist jailed over deadly poison plot

An al-Qaeda terrorist, jailed for life for killing a Special Branch officer, has been found guilty of planning to unleash a deadly poison in the UK.

Blimey, we’ve quite clearly had a close shave. Can you picture the streets littered with bodies? The death and destruction? But wait, what’s this?

The Guardian: Duncan Campbell - The ricin ring that never was

Yesterday’s verdicts on five defendants and the dropping of charges against four others make clear there was no ricin ring. Nor did the “ricin ring” make or have ricin. Not that the government shared that news with us. Until today, the public record for the past three fear-inducing years has been that ricin was found in the Wood Green flat occupied by some of yesterday’s acquitted defendants. It wasn’t.

…

The third plank of the al-Qaida-Iraq poison theory was the link between what Powell labelled the “UK poison cell” and training camps in Afghanistan. The evidence the government wanted to use to connect the defendants to Afghanistan and al-Qaida was never put to the jury. That was because last autumn a trial within a trial was secretly taking place. This was a private contest between a group of scientists from the Porton Down military research centre and myself. The issue was: where had the information on poisons and chemicals come from?

…

I was asked to look for the original source on the internet. This meant exploring Islamist websites that publish Bin Laden and his sympathisers, and plumbing the most prolific source of information on how to do harm: the writings of the American survivalist right and the gun lobby.

…

When, in October, I showed that the chemical lists found in London were an exact copy of pages on an internet site in Palo Alto, California, the prosecution gave up on the Kabul and al-Qaida link claims. But it seems this information was not shared with the then home secretary, David Blunkett, who was still whipping up fear two weeks later. “Al-Qaida and the international network is seen to be, and will be demonstrated through the courts over months to come, actually on our doorstep and threatening our lives,” he said on November 14.

…

We have all been victims of this mass deception. I do not doubt that Bourgass would have contemplated causing harm if he was competent to do so. But he was an Islamist yobbo on his own, not an Al Qaida-trained superterrorist. An Asbo might be appropriate.

Bourgass was clearly a dangerous man capable, as his conviction shows, of murder. He was also described by the lawyer of three men, who had charges against them in the same case dropped, as “conceded by all to be a difficult, anti-social loner”. Charles Clarke described this one man as “an illustration of the fact that terrorist organisations exist and are seeking to damage our lives”.

Like the “45 Minutes From Doom” claim, the Government and now a bandwagon-jumping Michael Howard don’t see the need to correct an erroneous impression, one that an Al-Qaeda cell were foiled in the nick of time in their attempt to “poison thousands”. But it seems clear to me that this dangerous nonsense needs debunking far and wide.

It appears that if only the present asylum system were better staffed and more dilligent, Bourgass would have been scooped up and not gone on to kill. New Labour decry the Tories for using individual cases of failure to beat the NHS. The Tories are doing the same here. But with more talk of “plans for identity cards, stronger border controls and the new anti-terror laws”, so are New Labour.

* I mean Manchester. No, London. Er, Bournemouth?

UPDATE: More at Blood & Treasure.

John Lettice gives us another debunking at The Register.

So we’ve had emotional blackmail, insults, scare tactics and foreign policy promises. Now we’ve got gimmicks.

Posting on the Guardian election blog yesterday, Polly Toynbee offered nose pegs to encourage reluctant New Labour voters to get out there and vote for the team. She started quite an outpouring in the comments section.

She rounded off her post with:

Don’t turn the poor in the UK into yet more innocent collateral damage of the Iraq war.

Now, she might have a point, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t plan on casting my vote with a cluster bomb from 35,000 feet.

Comparing my not wanting to vote New Labour with the bombing of civilians? You know, I think she’s convinced me.

(Thanks to John Ward for the link.)

Who should I vote for?

Your expected outcome:

Liberal Democrat

Your actual outcome:

Labour -19
Conservative -61
	Liberal Democrat 94
UK Independence Party -17
	Green 35

You should vote: Liberal Democrat

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

Is that good news?

(Link via just about everywhere.)

Today’s election blogging roundup is up. Go there for all your meaty election goodness.

Please send any links you’d like included in tomorrow’s roundup to generalelection@gmail.com.

As if being a UK soldier isn’t difficult enough in Iraq. The likes of body armour and ammunition have been in short supply either due to incompetence or political wrangling - a situation that has directly lead to deaths. Now, to add insult to injury, thusands of troops are going to be denied their vote:

The Herald: Thousands deprived of election vote

TENS of thousands of British servicemen who risked their lives to bring democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan will be unable to vote in the general election after the Ministry of Defence failed to deliver postal ballot leaflets in time for them to register.

You can probably expect a minister to be wheeled out to plea that this debacle is “more cockup than conspiracy”. But it’s worth noting that after the aforementioned supply problems and the perceived treatments of the Scottish regiments, a lot of the troops aren’t exactly going to be keen to put their cross in the New Labour box.

Tony Blair would have you cheer our lads for their hard work in bringing democracy to Iraq. You know, so Iraqis could have the vote?

UPDATE: It seems there’s been something of a rise in the number of soldiers voting with their feet:

The Guardian: Big rise in deserters ‘fuelled by Iraq war’

The number of soldiers to desert the army or go absent without leave has more than doubled over the past year, the Ministry of Defence has revealed. There are now more than 500 soldiers whose whereabouts are unknown.

I urge you to read this fantastic post from Robin Grant at perfect.co.uk and follow all the links - all much worth a read.

Well, we’ve had the avalanche of emotional blackmail from New Labour and its supporters to bring us back into the fold. When that didn’t work, David Aaronovitch - so Labour he’s about to take the Murdoch shilling - and Peter Hain decided insults and smears might be a better tactic. Again, no joy.

So now, as Robin points out, us anti-war, would-be dissenters, deserters and betrayers are to be offered a wide-ranging smorgasbord of humanitarian pledges to get us back on the New Labour bus. Some might be swayed and fair enough but, with this coming from the government that enthusiastically embraced the nomination and appointment of Paul Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank, I’ll wait to see the fine print if you don’t mind.

Also, do you really think we’d be seeing this if the New Labour high commmand weren’t, in the words of John Harris, “bricking it” after Peter Hain reported bad news from the marginals? You’ll have to forgive me for my cynicism but this is a crew that’s set its sail in any direction in contempt of the deeply held beliefs of the people who gave them their jobs. Now they’re donning their superhero costumes and offering (to heal) the world. Can they raise the dead as well?

“Labour officials admit that Iraq ‘comes up regularly’ on the doorstep,” says the above Guardian piece. Really? That’s not what John Reid’s been saying when he’s wheeled out to smear humanitarians. Or Jack Straw. So which is it? It can’t be both. Ah, silly me. This is New Labour we’re taking about. Of course it can be both. A fish rots from the head down and the stench of Tony Blair’s bifurcated mind hangs over all.

It’s too little too late and with trust in Blair resembling downtown Fallujah, how do we know we’d even see any of these goodies? And then, at the next election, we’re still pissed off and the whole perverse circus starts again - the blackmail, the insults and the promises.

Something’s got to give. Tactical voters, here are your orders.

Magic. A Tory poster generator. Someone with the ability to print largish posters could cause mayhem with this baby. I’m salivating at the thought.

(Link via Nick Barlow.)

Today’s election blogging roundup - put together by yours truly - is now up.

It’s Ken Owen’s turn tomorrow so send him any links you’d like included to generalelection@gmail.com.

I know it’s lazy blogging, but you have to admit this is pretty lazy campaigning as well:

EDP24 - Hain: Norwich seats crucial for Labour

Welsh Secretary Peter Hain said Norwich North and Norwich South were crucial and conceded that his party’s big fear was complacency.

“If Labour supporters flirt with the Liberal Democrats, they will get a Tory government by the back door.

“They will give Michael Howard the tradesman’s key to Number 10 and that will be back to the bad old days under the Tories of high mortgages, more unemployment and under-development of public services.”

The Back Door Count currently stands at: 4.

Yesterday was a big day for empty rhetoric. Before New Labour’s mutton-headed election broadcast we had the oily launch of the Tory Manifesto.

Michael Howard described the manifesto as reflecting “the simple longings of the British people”.

Simple longings? My simple longings are wishing I could get a decent pork pie in a supermarket and that if only 2000AD was still as good as when I read it when I was a kid.

The so-called simple longings of “more police”, “cleaner hospitals”, “lower taxes”, “school discipline”, “controlled immigration” and “accoutability” aren’t simple at all. All of these are actually complex issues that Howard has boiled down to an almost meaningless sludge that he can throw at the wall in the hope some of it sticks.

Take the “how hard can it be to keep a hospital clean” schtick for instance. Howard probably watches his cleaner doing the bathroom now and again and thinks: “There you go, a bit of Domestos wipes up my pee-pee drips a treat. Why can’t they do that in hospitals?” But it is actually slightly more complicated than that.

And that’s how meaningful debate and respect for politics goes tits up. I don’t believe for a second he thinks people other than journalists are actually going to read his manifesto - they’re going to rely on the edited highlights from him. The easily-swayed and unimaginitive, Sun and Mail reading, sections of society, will go:

“Too right! It’s a piece of piss cleaning a hospital/recruiting policemen/increasing public spending while simultaneously lowering taxes/letting fewer scroungers into Britain/holding our leaders to account. Bloody politicians.”

And then they turn over to whichever witless soap is on, their simplistic prejudices entrenched even further.

Howard, like Blair, hasn’t got the first clue about living in the real world. For him, humanity is an abstract concept - a warm, fuzzy, non-specific entity. As we’ve seen during the Iraq war, depersonalising humanity and marketing complex issues to the public at a macro level can have rather unpleasant consequences.

UPDATE: How hard can it be to keep a hospital clean? Very.

So anyway, I got an email from Alastair Campbell. Unlike that spoof blog that’s got knickers in a twist, I think this is the real deal. As chilling as a knock on the door in the middle of the night.

It’s written with the wit and vigour we’ve come to expect from Alastair. He talks of “the ludicrous Letwin” and “the vile (interestingly an anagram of evil) Daily Mail“.

When not indulging in this clever wordplay, the email tells us to watch the election broadcast on television or online. I’ve had a look at it and if even a scintilla of the stories about the Blair and Brown feud over the years are true then the cosy conversation between the two men in this broadcast is insincere, stage-managed, intelligence-insulting horseshit. The British public should feel incensed yet again.

I need to watch it again because the first time I saw it, what they actually said didn’t go in because I was so gobsmacked at the sheer breathtaking brass-neck of the whole enterprise. I notice also that the broadcast implores us to “vote Labour” despite Blair declaring the next term would be “unremittingly New Labour”. Since the difference between the two is like the difference between Ben Affleck and Marlon Brando, we should think about doing Blair for false advertising.

Campbell meanwhile, has done more to pollute the British body politic than any other single person in the last ten years. The blame for the destruction of trust in politics, not to mention too many lives to count, can be very firmly laid at his door.

I realise that these emails I and other bloggers take the piss out of are actully meant for New Labour supporters but I do wonder how much of a rallying figure Campbell is to the rank and file who would describe themselves as real “Labour” not the strawberry Angel Delight version Campbell is straining every sinew to shill. He’s like the bloke you pal up with in your first week at university and then spend the rest of the term avoiding when you find out what he’s really like. In this case, a foul-mouthed, inarticulate gobshite with delusions of adequacy.

UPDATE: More from Tim. Someone’s been letting Milburn at the computers again.

The esteemed Nick Barlow’s roundup of yesterday’s election campaigning is up at the 2005 UK Election roundup blog.

It’s my turn to put the roundup together today, so if anybody out there fancies having a piece included - written by you or not - please email me at generalelection@gmail.com. Ta.

I had planned to describe the first week of the election campaign in Hove as lacklustre. There has been little else to report other than a leaflet each from both New Labour and Tories and a rash of new posters - 1 for New Labour (another one of those WARNING: THE ELECTORATE ARE GULLIBLE ones) and 4 Tory ones, including the last in the set of the 11 Nicholas Boles ones. The Tories are docked one because one of the Nicholas Boles ones in Portslade has ben plastered over with one for T-Mobile. The count currently stands at:

Conservatives: 14 (up 1, down 1)
New Labour: 5 (up 1)

And there I would have left it had there not been a ring at the door yesterday. When I opened I found a local activist accompanied by none other than Celia Barlow, the New labour candidate for Hove.

Now, this just after my posting the piece labasting Peter Hain (see below), picture the scene: Me swelling to my full height and blowing poor Celia across the road with the force of my righteous fury and razor-sharp invective. Are picturing it? Good, now forget it.

My mind went completely blank and I folded like a house of cards. Celia is very charming and I found myself unable to be blunt with her. I guess I should go easier on Prince Charles - not that I’m comparing Celia Barlow to Robert Mugabe.

So, it turns out that I’m a passive-aggressive confrontation-shy milquetoast with a classic working class deference to power. Who’d a thunk it?

She did give me the usual, “Hove is a straight fight between Labour and Tories” and the “don’t let the Tories back in” bit. A couple of interesting nuggets did come out: The Liberal Democrat candidate, Paul Elgood, isn’t bothering to campaign in Hove, so little chance does he have of being elected. The second piece of information was of a darker hue. The Tory “It’s not racist to impose limits on immigration” poster in Portslade is directly opposite the entrance to the Hindu Temple we have here. I hadn’t made the connection. Intentional or not, it’s a pretty ugly conflation. I nearly gave my vote to New Labour on the spot.

I managed to salvage a little dignity. She did seem honest on the matters my partner and I raised (my partner proving a much more sophisticated and less biddable interrogator than me). The leadership contest to replace Tony will begin in around two year’s time apparently. PFI isn’t going to go away under a new New Labour government. Celia was against the war and would vote against any future conflict, having informed Peter Hain but not the Prime Minister of her intentions.

And this was where she made her only slip.

(If she remembers the door where she had this conversation, then Hove Labour now know the whereabouts of Chicken Yoghurt headquarters. Please don’t push dogshit through my letterbox - the baby’s just learned crawl.)

I asked after the support she’d had from visits to Hove by Ruth Kelly, Peter Hain and Tony Blair, would she feel able to defy a three line whip on a future vote for war.

At this she said:

“The vote for the war wasn’t on a three line whip, it was a free vote.”

I was too busy tugging my forelock to pull her up on it, I really hate being rude to nice people. But she was wrong:

Guardian, Feb 27 2003: Yesterday in parliament

Tony Blair suffered the biggest backbench revolt of his premiership as 121 Labour MPs voted against his hardline stance on Iraq. In what many MPs believed would be their last chance to voice concerns before the start of military action, a record number defied a three-line whip.

(My emphasis). At the parliamentary debate on March 18 2003 on whether to give the Government authority for war, John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington, said:

The Prime Minister said that he wants people to vote not out of loyalty but on the basis of understanding and supporting the argument. I respect him for that. I would respect him even more if he gave us a free vote instead of a three-line Whip, and if the Whips were called off from trying to persuade people in their normal manner.

(My emphasis). Now, it might seem a small argument over a minor, obscure piece of parliamentary procedure. But there is a world of difference between a free vote, where MPs vote according to conscience, and a three-line whip where MPs are compelled to vote along party lines.

I’m not suggesting that Celia Barlow deliberately tried to mislead me, it’s just that her version of events softens, for the Government, the action of going to war: that MPs voted willingly for war with their consciences rather than being compelled by a three-line whip and the implications for defying it as John McDonnell darkly hints.

Celia and her companion stayed a talked to us for quite a while which you have to admire that considering we, particularly my partner, came across as not going to vote for New Labour. She promised to send another leaflet, “50 good things New Labour have done” or somesuch. I’ll be interested to see if it comes.

I just hope it now doesn’t arrive through the living room window tied around a brick. Only joking.

Peter Hain is a fool. Not being the sharpest tool in the Cabinet - and against some blunt competition as well - his brief for the election campaign seems to be to shed what little dignity and integrity he has left by trying to get liberals onside to vote for his grubby, civilian-exploding, privatising, bullying, big business-promoting “political party”.

His one tactic seemed to be endlessly parroting on about the Tories getting into Number 10 via “the back door”. When that didn’t seem to work, and short of his own ideas, he nicks a line from David Aaronovitch, and decides that being insulting is the better way to go about things:

‘There’s now a kind of dinner party critics who quaff shiraz or chardonnay and just sneeringly say, “You are no different from the Tories”,’ he said. ‘Most of the people in this category are pretty comfortably off: it’s not going to be the end of the world if they get a Tory government. In a working-class constituency like mine, this is a lifeline. It’s not a luxury.’

Now, I’m from Blackpool and ended up in a shitty part of Brighton by way of Huddersfield Polytechnic. I don’t drink shiraz or chardonnay. I’m not a Hampstead or Islington liberal or wherever-they’re-supposed-to-skulk liberal. I arrived at my personal humanitarian morality not through the bottom of a wine bottle or by consorting with intellectuals in uptown salons.

I’m not going to vote New Labour. Not because, I’m a sneerer. Not because I think New Labour are the same as the Tories. And certainly not because I’m rich enough to ride out a Tory Government. I’ll spell it out again:

I’M NOT VOTING NEW LABOUR BECAUSE THE PARTY ALLOWED ITSELF TO BE LED BY THE NOSE BY A MESSIANIC CHARLATAN INTO A WAR IN WHICH - AT LEAST - 16,000 PEOPLE WERE KILLED IN A VARIETY OF UNSPEAKABLY AWFUL WAYS.

The leader of the party responsible for this carnage is still in his job despite the fact that his reasons for going to war were completely discredited and Iraq in the - unplanned for - aftermath has resembled an abbatoir.

And as for Hain, well they say the empty vessel makes most noise. Insulting me isn’t going to win my vote - who’s bright idea was that? It’s so inept I actually think it was his. What’s worse, it’s insults from a once honourable man who campaigned against Apartheid but now, suckling at the teat of power without purpose, advocates house arrest without trial and the bombing of civilians. I’ve got more morality in my little finger than a turncoat like Hain has in his entire orange body.

You want my vote, Hain? Here are my terms.

This week, I will be starting a Hove chapter of the Backing Blair campaign.

ePolitix.com, April 5: It’s Blair or Howard, says Darling

“Only Tony Blair or Michael Howard can walk in the door of Number 10 the day after the election. A vote for other parties could let the Tories in by the back door.”

Glasgow Evening Times: Salmond urges Scots to claim back oil cash

Labour continued its attack on the Tories with Scotland Office Minister Stirling MP Anne McGuire claiming the choice was between a Labour Government investing in social housing and community regeneration or a Conservative party committed to cuts.

“All of Labour’s work could be put in jeopardy if people were to vote for fringe parties - this could allow the Tories into Downing Street by the back door,” she said.

Back Door Count currently stands at: 3.

Tim Ireland was interviewed about the Backing Blair campaign on Radio 4’s World at One this lunchtime.

For those of you who missed it, the programme can be heard again here for 24 hours.

Well, he’s at it again:

The Scotsman, April 6: Hain Warns of ‘Back Door’ Tory Threat

Voting Liberal Democrat in a key Labour/Tory marginal would let the Conservatives into power “by the back door”, Welsh Secretary Peter Hain warned today.

Peter wanna cracker! Peter wanna cracker! Peter wanna cracker! Peter wanna cracker!

It’s the now familiar New Labour trick whereby if they repeat something, erm, contentious enough times, a strange alchemy occurs and it becomes true.

Go and read this fantastic post by Nick Barlow to find out why Peter is talking bollocks.

I hereby inaugarate the Official Chicken Yoghurt Peter Hain Back Door Count. The cunning use of a Google News Alert will inform us of how many times he uses the dread phrase during the election campaign.

The scores on the (back) doors: 1.

The first blow is struck!