AND YOU THOUGHT AMERICAN POLITICS WAS NASTY

Nice Mr Tony Blair, British prime minister, has just unveiled a new ad campaign in time for the general election. Aimed at party loyalists, it features his opponent (and my friend) William Hague, Tory leader, as … the son of Satan! The election ad starts with a video of Margaret Thatcher and a condemnation of her economic policies as verging on Satanic. Although she has now departed, the ad warns: “They forgot one thing – there was a son.” Cut to video of a 16-year-old William Hague addressing the 1977 Conservative party conference. Background music is supplied by the soundtrack of “Damien.” If I were William, I’d hit back with another movie reference, designed to get at Blair’s handling of the foot and mouth epidemic. Call it: “Silence of the Lambs.”