The blog comes to you fresh from the Observer's weekly politics news conference, a congregation so illustrious that coffee and biscuits are served. Real coffee. Real biscuits.
What news of court? Well, the government is affecting to be just tickled pink by the latest opinion polls showing Labour's lead over the Tories narrowing. A close race, surmise the Red strategists, will wring reluctant Labour votes out of people who feel viscerally unable to back the Tories and who might have been thinking about a casual punt on the Lib Dems, you know, just to teach the government a lesson.
Of course the Tories think they might finally be mobilising those people who swung things Labourwards in 1997. Many of them, surmise the Blue strategists, must have voted Tory once before so they can do it again. All that is needed, think the Conservatives, is for their party to be presented once more as a respectable middle class choice instead of a clubbish pack of extreme right wing middle-aged men fomenting crypto-racist dogma on the fringes of society. Easy.
At least it is shaping up to be a genuinely interesting election. The blog wants to see a hung parliament, not least because it has never happened in our short voting lifetime. Think of it as psephological trainspotting.
