It’s been quite a week for poor ol’ Tony, currently stranded in South Africa. Tonight the government won a key vote on ID Cards, maybe because of the last minute appeal by co-Prime Minister and Chancellor Gordon Brown for rebels to shut up and get in line. One rather irate Westminster insider has been going around spouting off to anybody who’ll listen that Brown is about to accept a job switch to DPM, but I’m not sure I believe that. You might have though that following the slaughtering at Dunfermline that Brown would keep his head down, but apparently not! I suppose I’d better add congratulations to LibDems for that one, a good result for everybody who is anti-government. Can the Tories win any by-election? Probably, but the LibDems are now so good at it that they could started a distant eighth place with few votes than you need signatures on a nomination paper and still find a bar chart that proves that only they can win here! And they’d probably go on to do it! Over on pb.com one LibDem candidate in a by-election where the Tories score 70% to Labour’s 30% and no LibDem candidate asks how he can create a bar chart to spin that one! Answers in the comments section.

The LibDem leadership contest rumbles on, livened up only by random attacks on each other. Chris says it’s between Sir Ming and himself, Simon says it’s between Sir Ming and himself. Both Huhne and Hughes magic up YouGov polls to prove their point. One ex-colleague from Hillingdon Borough in West London tells me that Hughes “two horse race” predictions are worthless in the capital after he predicted that the last Mayoral election was between Red Ken and himself – before slumping to a pathetic third behind Tory “Shagger” Norris.

Locally we had our first major campaigning session out in West Earlham last Saturday. This has always been tough Tory-territory but the good result last time (we lost out by only 14 votes) is encouraging more and more Tories to get postal votes and pledge to vote this year. What is interesting is the number of people willing to listen to Cameron’s message – far more than last year. Labour are still ahead in the polling district but well down on where they were last year. We then spent the weekend in London seeing my new Nephew! Hurrah!