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Campaign analysis: Thursday April 28
Daniel Forman's daily diary of the election campaign.
Thursday April 28, 11:05am
Is this election about the economy, as Labour wants it to be?
Or is it, as the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats would prefer, a referendum on Iraq, the prime minister's leadership and trust in Tony Blair?
The choice was at its clearest today. Labour's "grid" - or planned schedule of campaign topics - was set to thrust the spotlight on its record as "the party of enterprise".
The venue was booked, the business manifesto printed and the script written as the final week of the campaign was set to kick off in the same way the campaign itself did: "Trust us to look after the pound in your pocket."
Then events, as they have a habit of doing, got in the way. The latest leaks of the attorney general's legal advice on Iraq emerged last night and kept attention firmly on the rights and wrongs of going to war.
A gift perhaps for the Tories and Lib Dems. Except of course politics is always a bit more complicated than that.
Firstly, rightly or wrongly, life and death and war and peace are not always voters' top priorities. Foreign affairs figures very low on the electorate's list of election issues.
Trust, particularly in Blair, is a bigger threat. But as polling evidence proves again today, the public may not like the prime minister any more but still prefer him to Michael Howard.
Secondly, a week is still a long time in politics, never more so than in election campaigns. Come next Thursday this could all be forgotten, although the suspiciously well timed leaks suggested there may have been more to follow in the coming days.
The prime minister sought to pre-empt any further revelations by publishing the full advice, saying to journalists: "You've probably got it all by now anyway."
Thirdly, there is as yet no smoking gun. Unless or until that emerges there is enough doubt and counter argument about the attorney's advice to leave most minds unclear or unchanged.
It appears it is as hard to get an unequivocal answer out of Lord Goldsmith as it is of any lawyer.
By and large most people have come to a conclusion on Iraq and the polls still point to another Labour victory. In many ways this election could help Blair put the war behind him if, after everything, he is back in Number 10 with a re-endorsed mandate.
Iraq will lose Labour votes to the Lib Dems, Respect, the Greens and abstentions. But for all Howard's best efforts the Conservatives cannot get around the fact they did and still do support the war.
And the electoral system means the election is not actually a choice between Iraq or the economy but Labour or Tory, warts and all.
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