But they also like playing the candid friend. We thought you said he was a hopeless wash-out. No, 'he fights not just in the Tory interest - it is in ALL our interests that there is a proper and robust Opposition if Labour wind up with their expected massive majority. The present danger is not that Blair will lose or fall back, a victim of apathy or random egg-throwers. It is, on the Sun's own poll, that he will have a 355-seat majority.
Some tabloids are never satisfied.
Sixteen days to save the UK,' proclaimed the Mail , reporting an 'electrifying call to arms' from this returning Mummy, a Lady not for embalming - but then they stuck it sheepishly on page seven. Even they can sense the lights going out. Tedious old Gallup for the Telegraph found only 5 per cent of voters who thought anything to do with the EU was the 'most urgent' problem facing the nation. Thus, at last, this campaign develops an unexpected edge, and the Emperor Rupert looks for his clothes. The paper tries to cheer itself up by declaring 'the huffing and puffing about Europe' merely 'a phoney war'.