Hello everyone and many thanks to Andrew for the invitation to help mind the store while he takes a well-deserved breather. My day blog is at The Spectator but it's nice to moonlight occasionally...

The big news here in Blighty is the Tories vanishing lead in the opinion polls. As recently as December David Cameron enjoyed a 13 point lead; yesterday a poll was published that had the Tories on 37% of the vote and Labour on 35%. Since, thanks to the quirks of the current constituency boundaries, the Tories need to win by six or seven points to secure a majority, this result, if repeated at the election, would actually give Gordon Brown a victory that once seemed impossible.

The good news is that this means the election is going to be more interesting than once seemed likely. A betting man should still favour Mr Cameron, not least because the underlying fundamentals remain in his favour. So what's caused the Tory wobble? A mixture of complacency (a traditional Tory vice) and confusion, principally. What are the Tories really for? I wrote about this for the Daily Beast yesterday and Iain Martin has a measured judgement on the rallying call Cameron delivered to the Tories' Spring Forum yesterday:]]>