Earlier this year we saw the LibDems fight a by-election in Cheam with a negative campaign and no positive policies despite having controlled the Borough for 22 years. Something similar is happening in Crewe & Nantwich where the Conservatives are hoping for their first by-election victory in a Labour-held seat since Mitcham & Morden in 1982. The News of the World is publishing a poll tomorrow which shows the Tories in a 8% lead.

Government Ministers have all been up to Crewe with one notable exception, Gordon Brown. The Labour candidate has repeatedly refused to say whether she sees the PM as an asset or liability to her campaign. Labour activists are hiding their leaflets from reporters. The newsletters concentrate on asking whether Edward Timpson is posh or not, belying Gordon Brown’s repeated claims that he is just getting on with the job in leading a successful Government. It’s all getting a little embarrassing now.

Edward Timpson does live in an expensive house. His father built up the successful Timpson chain of shoe repairers. Crewe is in Cheshire, home to the WAG. Timpson’s place is not Beckingham Palace. He was brought up along with 80 foster children that his parents looked after at various points in their lives. Timpson was brought up around the area.

Tamsin Dunwoody has dropped the second half of her double barreled name ‘Dunwoody-Kneafsey’ in order to maximise name recognition in trying to win her late mother’s seat. Her grandmother had a seat in the House of Lords and her grandfather was a Party grandee. So much for abolishing hereditary succession. She also lives in a rather large house, except hers is 125 miles away in South Wales. The desperate regression to class warfare was capped when that great prole Quentin Davies rolled into town. I can’t imagine having a Quentin and a Tamsin on my doorstep explaining how simply awful it would be to have toffs in charge. It would be funny if Gordon wasn’t still clinging on by his fingertips at all of our expense.