Can I point out that the Lab-Con marginals poll would have been taken before yesterday's events? Which makes it seriously out of date.

Wow! Fantastic stuff from the fearless Ben Gummer and his team. About time somebody called Labour on their Sure Start lies. I spend a lot of time on the doorstep reassuring pensioners after Labour scare tactics. Well done indeed.

Iain Dale would make a very fine peer. He is a seasoned media pro, an exemplar of the new party, former chief of staff to David Davis. He's a fine man and a good friend. In the American phrase, he's "good people". In the achievement stakes, he has been a key Tory influencer for some time, is an innovate and important political publisher, and is connected across the party and the press. A very good suggestion.

"The Dave Inci Code" that's brilliant. Might have to nick that for a future blog :)

Absolutely loads have fought much harder than me, Tony, but thanks for the compliment anyway. We all do the best we can, and we are all counting the hours until Tuesday and Brown's squeals of pain as he is dragged kicking and screaming down the Mall to the Palace....

Am I to flatter myself that I have also been on your mind, Mr. Warner? :)

I certainly am. I will vote to repeal the Hunting Act on a free vote.

And a happy Easter to you Damian :) thank you for the good-natured response! Much appreciated.

This is so great. Inspiring stuff. Well done Annesley!

that should be "in advance of a general election" - sorry.

I have to say, that YouGov's recently and inexplicably changed weightings, which Peter Kellner refused to address on his appearance on politicalbetting.com - especially in that they weight Labour loyal up to 26% when other pollsters weight them down to 21% - are somewhat suspect. I infer no lack of integrity but I do infer a lack of accuracy. This poll, although encouraging for the Tories, in my opinion greatly underplays the advantage in the marginal seats. I gather that our own consituency counts as an "ultra-marginal" and so would not have been included - this poll covers the tougher marginals only - but nonetheless this does not jibe with what I hear from PPC colleagues. At all. With its old weightings system, YouGov consistently showed itself to be one of the most reliable pollsters around - look at their results for the London Mayoral election. It baffles me as to why, when a weightings system is working vs actual results in local and by-elections, you would change it to favour Labour and prop up their floor in advance of a local election. If it isn't broke - and YG's results said it wasn't - why fix it?

No, I was not. I joined the party - because I thought we were going into the Euro, because i believed the lies about sticking to Tory tax levels, and because (erroneously) I thought Blair was a Tory. But I never so much as attended a meeting or delivered a single leaflet. Rather, I was fed up - and I think you should understand that demonising people because they once supported Labour is pretty self-defeating. Elections are about persuading people to change their minds. Millions of natural Tories voted for Blair in 1997, and it doesn't help the party in 2010 if you look down on them.

When I was 14.

I've never voted Labour in my life, Treacle. As I have said before, in the 1997 election I was a Conservative activist - for my mother!