Election Comment... has been somewhat lacking from this blog so far.
Well, on this blogger's part there was a little sharp intake of breath as the Conservatives went into the campaign putting pressure on Labour, albeit having to ride their gaffes as they did so. Would it work? I wondered. Were all the people I admired wrong in considering Howard a duffer in a lawyer's guise, possessing only the patina of well-heeled experience in high places, rather than the judgement needed to expose the Blairmonster?

Well, there is something like this Larkin poem about the Conservative's campaign, and even US Conservatives don't know who to root for (unless it's Blair). Even Steyn would vote for the big B's grinning mug (and it has to be said Howard is wrong to attack on the smug smile front as he looks every inch as smug in his own way)

To top that off, the polls show a general Conservative slum of percentages huddled bleakly at around the 30 mark (well, a little above, being charitable). This despite the fact that I'd say the 'base', so-called, is fairly well motivated.

Melanie Phillips has been lambasting Howard for months and months, especially over his Iraq war opportunism, and I think she's taken time out from Howard bashing (being, as she is -I believe- a Conservative at heart) to lambast Blair for his unwillingness to take on his critics over the war. She's right there too, though I think the whole phenomenon Howard has failed to understand, completely, and Blair has failed to take to heart, is that the party that will succeed in changing this country in a genuine way is the one which stands up and argues with the British people, as it were, man-to-man, as fellow adults, with adult complexity. Naivity, perhaps, you may say- but courage and naivity often appear the same when we're trapped in a cycle of cravenness.