Nevin's notes: 27/04/2010

An alternative take on the election

Gushing Gordon

If I'm going to go down... Some worried faces after a couple of enthusiastic endorsements from the Prime Minister yesterday. First, on a visit to Weymouth, Gordon praised Asda's value and Sainsbury's shareholders – and the rest of you should check that feeling of relief, though, as he went on to promise all of us a "lovely" summer.

Holiday teaser

Bong! It hadn't been going that well for Greg Clark, the Tory energy and climate change shadow, in a debate on his special subject on the BBC's Daily Politics show; plenty of incoming on Ken Clarke's windy attitude to onshore wind turbines, for example. But then came a somewhat easier quiz: had he taken a flight to go on holiday in the last two years? Well, can you remember? Poor Greg: perhaps a break somewhere warm, not too breezy, would be good.

Wanted: Tarzan

Roar! Ken Clarke and Lord Mandelson will be on Daily Politics today, big beasts both. But where, I hear you ask, is the noblest beast of all, Lord Heseltine, from whom we've heard not so much as a gwowl? Given this column's gift for flushing them out – I had only to think of the Quiet Man, Iain Duncan Smith, for instance, to hear him turning up the volume on the radio yesterday – the most imperious lisp in politics will doubtless soon be back with us: Tory sources say they would love to have him. Interesting. I imagine they wouldn't be quite so keen on Jonathan Aitken, who, for some reason, has failed to answer my request for his election engagements.

Desperate times...

Comedy. All lovers of stand-up held their breath as, later on in Weymouth, the Prime Minister told his audience his mother-in-law lived nearby. Ah, well, it would have been a desperate strategy, even if I do fancy a resemblance there to the late Les Dawson ("My mother-in-law fell down a wishing well, I was amazed, I never knew they worked"). Meanwhile, I read that Rory Bremner is going down a storm reliving a Gordon exchange with a child earlier in the campaign, when the PM asked a boy his age. "Five," said the boy. "My son's six," Brown barked back. Must try harder. Next!

The change agenda

Down Your Way. And reader Mr Denton has intelligence from Northern Ireland, where the supporters of East Londonderry Tory candidate Lesley Macaulay have taken the Change theme a touch too far, spelling her name on all her posters "Macauley".

c.nevin@independent.co.uk