Election jitters

Am I worried about the outcome of the UK General Election? Hell yeah! The pundits and the Press Corps have no idea what is going on in the marginals. The predictions are of a Labour victory with anything between a 10 and 100-seat majority. But if predictions are that precise then surely other outcomes, such as a hung Parliament or worse, cannot be ruled out.

Odious and creepy though I find the man, I am compelled to accept that Michael Howard has fought the most steady and consistent campaign, driving the same messages home time and again, and dictating, to a large extent, what made the headlines every day. In these circumstances one would expect the polls to favour his party more. That they don't suggests that for all his consistency, Howard's message is just not being approved of by enough people. But is this as true in the marginals as it evidently is nationally? Nobody has any idea and we won't know until tomorrow morning.

The continuing saga about Iraq has undeniably hurt Blair and through him the Labour Party. All last week it hijacked the agenda and drowned out the good news stories regarding Child Tax Credits, Sure Start, the New Deal, the strong economy, more hospitals, more schools, more doctors, nurses, teachers and police that I'm sure Blair and Brown would have preferred to highlight. However, this week attention turned away from the war, at least to some extent, and Howard concentrated instead on his timetable for government and the changes he'd make. At the last hurdle he began, finally, to use more positive language and displayed a confident air. By contrast, Blair, despite all his government's tremendous achievements, appeared fearful and out of control, reduced to playing the fear card to warn us of the consequences of Tory victory. That there are no lies here is self-evident to me, but I wish the PM could have ignored or at least downplayed the Tory threat. Instead he should have told us more about the plans for the third term or at least reminded us about what was great in the second, when, this week, he finally had the opportunity to do so.

I wonder how much of the PM's fretful performance will have put off undecided voters. Clearly the strategy was to alarm the Labour stay-at-homes into turning out and voting after all. Blair has shown plenty of political nous in the past though; perhaps I should suspend judgement and wait to see if his tactics this time have pulled the iron out of the fire again.