The Lib Dems launched their manifesto, even if Charles Kennedy was momentarily thrown by a question on the party's planned replacement for the council tax.

Poor man. His head is probably full of these.

As Robert Shrimsley writes in the FT:

It is a public fact that bookmakers are offering the same odds on Charles Kennedy's newborn son becoming prime minister as they are on him achieving that goal. This seems grossly unfair. The lad is only a few days old and already he's being written off.


Veritas, Robert Kilroy-Silk's "straight talking" but still more of a dinner party than a popular party, also launched its manifesto, with immigration policy at its heart.

According to the former chat show host:

“No one went to the electorate and asked them...nobody voted for multiculturalism. It is something that has been imposed on them by the liberal fascists in London. It’s not what people want.”

Despite ministerial assurances that the issue will be tackled after the election, the row over potential fraud in postal voting simmers on, with two parties - including George Galloway's RESPECT coalition - threatening legal challenges, according to The Times.


Round the government's comfy sofa, meanwhile, it seems the buzzphrase among Brownites is "unity in transition", while the Tories will doubtless be gleeful that Alan Milburn apologised for the death of PC Stephen Oake, who was murdered two years ago by ricin plotter and bogus asylum seeker Kamel Bourgass.

As Philip Johnston writes in The Telegraph:

"There is no more incendiary issue in the election campaign than what to do about immigration and asylum."

and it is indeed sad that an issue of such fundamental social importance should become a political football.


Finally, for a much-needed entertaining flavour of life on the campaign trail from a candidate's eye-view, take a look at Stanley ("Is it true Boris is your father?") Johnson's blog on the Channel 4 News site.