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Campaign analysis: Friday April 29
Daniel Forman's daily diary of the election campaign.
Friday April 29, 11:25am
Well that was wobbly Thursday. But will it be freaky Friday?
Labour was always going to have at least one day on the back foot in this campaign and yesterday was certainly it.
Five days of focus on Iraq came to a climax with the overnight leaks of Lord Goldsmith's legal advice and Tony Blair's eventual u-turn on publishing it.
The throwaway line to journalists "you've probably got it all anyway" was one of the stranger moments in history.
His uncertain day came to an end in the Question Time studio where the prime minister looked rattled and most unlike his usual sure, telegenic self.
The thing about wobbles is that they can go either way, forwards or back, to coin a phrase.
If, after momentarily tilting, the Labour election bandwagon gets back into full steamroller mode this weekend, Thursday will go down alongside the Prescott punch in 2001 as a brief blip rather than the day momentum shifted.
If, on the other hand, Iraq becomes the defining issue of the final long, bank holiday weekend and Labour cannot get attention onto its preferred subjects of the economy, education and health, Michael Howard might just have brought the score back to 2-1.
All that is needed now is a poll - rogue or otherwise - showing the gap between the parties closing for full panic mode to set in.
But there are as many inconsistencies in Howard's position as Blair's, not least that his "regime change plus" policy would itself have been illegal under international law.
The main beneficiaries of this will probably be the Lib Dems, who love to boast of the momentum they make during the campaign.
Cowley Street strategists will be praying for a weekend poll to show Tory flatlining and third party growth, to make the case that protest votes are safe and that tactical voting will unseat both Conservative and Labour MPs.
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