Mr Flight’s speech was secretly taped and the recording passed to the Times. The move bore all the hallmarks of Labour’s attack squad, which has targeted Tory public meetings in successive election campaigns in an attempt to catch them out.

So keen is Mr Blair to hide from us his actual election manifesto, and so keen is he to avoid a proper debate on the value of a Labour government and the value of his time in office, that he’s now sent his cronies to infiltrate a Conservative private dinner. Not a public meeting, as they have done previously, but a private dinner. It would be nice to observe some of the private goings-on in Number Ten, I’d imagine, but then they won’t even share with us the legal advice on the Iraq War, produced by an Atorney General who ultimately works for us in order to protect our country from legal reprisals. That’s very public business, methinks, so if they won’t disclose that, I’m sure their private affairs will remain so. But how are we to trust a party that stoops to these levels?

I’m going to be one of the few people on this whole issue to stick up for Mr Howard’s course of action – he said he wanted a whiter-than-white government, and if anybody didn’t deliver on their promises they’d be sacked. Therefore, when someone announces that they’ve made public promises that they don’t intend to keep, he sacks them. It’s actually quite a refreshing change from Mr Blair’s government, where you really have to do some blatant lying and cheating to be sacked for six months, after which you’re rehired.

I’m desperately trying to like the Conservatives, because it seems that they are the best people to vote for in my constituency from a tactical standpoint. Whilst the Liberal Democrats would be the ideal party in terms of reflecting my beliefs, past experience shows that they’ve no chance of winning my seat. However, there’s only an 8% gap between Tory and Labour candidates in 2001, so there’s a good chance that we could become a true blue constituency. Anything to stop the slimy David Borrow from retaining his far-from-safe-seat.

Alan Milburn has done a lengthy interview in today’s Weekend magazine, which seems rather ill-advised. It doesn’t reflect well on him at all; it makes him look like he’ll do absolutely anything to win this election. He knows Labour’s record won’t do it, he knows Labour’s policies won’t do it, so he’s insisting on character assassinations instead. Which I personally think will backfire.

The Lib Dems have just proposed that prisoners should be given the vote, and Labour is planning a counter-blast, using a headline from the Evening Standard that labels the Lib Dems as criminally stupid… I find myself becoming angry with Milburn. What is so wrong about giving prisoners the vote? Why should this frighten the British public? Why do you think it is a vote-winner? Isn’t this just negative politics and fear-mongering?

Mr Milburn’s reply?

You’ve got to remember a political campaign is a contest… It’s a question of being realistic about what the nature of a campaign is. You’re trying to win something.

If that doesn’t suggest that Labour is willing to mislead people and slither its way back into Number Ten, then I’m not sure what else does. So for Labour to go on the attack over a now sacked Conservative MP who expressed a personal view that does not represent party policy, when they themselves have a disgraced MP presiding over the dirtiest, slimiest of campaigns, seems a little rich to me. And certainly not a vote-winner.