Though they accept that Labour is a busted flush under Gordon Brown, they are far from convinced that Cameron can achieve an overall majority – despite Britain suffering from the most serious recession for decades.

This is their reasoning.

They are increasingly worried at the prospect of Labour going to the country on March 25, rather than the first week of May, as has been widely assumed.

The reason is simple. It would mean Labour having to put off the Budget until after polling day – a move that would make it easier for the Government to attack George Osborne's record as Shadow Chancellor, and how, rightly or wrongly, he has positioned the Conservatives on the wrong side of the economic argument.

It would mean Labour could be vague about the scale of the cuts that they would have to implement after the election.

One senior Tory MP believes it would be inconceivable that Cameron would not face a challenge to his leadership if the Tories were to fall at the final fence.

The backbencher says the polling evidence suggests that the anti-Government vote will split so many ways, to the benefit of the Greens,
UKIP and the repugnant BNP, that the Tories will not win sufficient seats in the North – especially following Cameron's capitulation over his broken referendum promise on the Lisbon Treaty.

And there's another reason for the Tory concerns. They're still not ruling out the possibility of Brown stepping aside, or being forced out of office by Lord Mandelson, and an interim leader leading Labour into the election.

The tearoom talk, evidently, is of Alan Johnson, the Hull MP, becoming Prime Minister and running the country until polling day – while Harriet Harman, Labour's deputy leader, runs the election campaign.

It is why the coming weeks promise to be equally challenging for both a bankrupt Labour Party and their Tory heir apparents.



CONSERVATIVE and Liberal Democrat MPs continue to refuse to sit on regional select committees because they object to the way in which they have been set up.

Now that the Yorkshire committee finds itself short of Labour MPs after Mary Creagh's elevation to the whips office, they are refusing to allow Labour to appoint a new member.

It means there's deadlock.

Don't they realise this is the type of silly politics that is lamented by voters? And, given that they're normally the first to complain when Ministers are not defending Yorkshire's interests, isn't this an opportunity – despite its imperfections – to hold Yorkshire Minister Rosie Winterton to account rather than calling her rude names behind her back?

Deliberate intransigence will achieve nothing. A mature debate, however, might – just – make a difference.



HERE'S another example of Yorkshire being let down by the powers-that-be in London.

According to Vale of York MP Anne McIntosh, the Cabinet Office was meant to meet last year – yes, last year – and report by the spring on the threat to critical key infrastructure if there's a repeat of the 2007 floods.

It has still not done so, despite the Government making political capital out of this initiative.

The best explanation offered by Huw Irranca-Davies, an Environment Minister, was that £9.7m has been awarded to 77 local authorities with the highest risk and potential for surface water flooding, and that McIntosh should stop complaining.

He then added: "Sometimes it would pay to stand up and recognise the work that is being done."

What nerve. Doesn't he realise that this money equates to just under £126,000 per council?

It's hardly going to make a difference.



STAFF Sergeant Olaf Schmid died a hero. He was detonating his 65th
bomb in Afghanistan, just a week before he was due to return home to his family, when he was killed. His bravery saved countless lives. His body was flown home on Thursday where, movingly, he was described as the heroes' hero.

News of his death came on the day that the run-off for the Afghan presidential election was cancelled to avoid a repeat of the widespread corruption witnessed in the first round, and at the beginning of a brutal week in Afghanistan from a UK perspective. The discredited Hamid Karzai remains in power.

Yet Douglas Alexander, the International Development Secretary, could not answer this question: Are our soldiers risking their lives, or have they lost their lives, to prop up an Afghan regime that is corrupt?

He blustered. Typical Alexander. He's way out of his depth. But the greater insult was that he did not even have the basic courtesy, in
this season of remembrance, to wear a poppy.

I would not blame Sgt Schmid's family if they questioned the legitimacy of the Afghanistan war when our troops are having to answer to such discourteous political leaders.



UNLIKE the previous Wednesday when Gordon Brown did not have the courage to listen to a Parliamentary statement on how 14 servicemen died in a Nimrod disaster because of this Government's failings, he did
remain after PMQs this week for his deputy Harriet Harman's response to the Kelly report on MPs' expenses.

What does that say about our supposed war leader's judgment?



THE 50th anniversary of the opening of the M1 prompted interminable discussions on radio phone-ins this week about its dullness, and various other grumbles.

They overlooked, perhaps, the most important point – what would Britain, and Yorkshire, be like without the motorway network, especially now that it can cost upwards of £1,000 to travel the length of the country by train?