Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain's democratic left

The Tory election strategy has been clear for some time: persuade people that the general election is a foregone conclusion – a mere referendum on the government rather than a choice between two parties – and slip into Downing Street through the back door.

When I first started working in newspapers in the mid-1980s, whenever I met other journalists for a drink, sooner or later the conversation would turn to the hottest topic of the time, more important even than our perfidious editors or, indeed, ourselves. Instead, we’d earnestly debate the motion: “Who is madder – Robert Maxwell or Rupert Murdoch?

Not even the London Mayor himself sees convinced by his idea of an airport in the Thames Estuary, says Murad Qureshi

Ed Miliband is confident than the Copenhagen climate change summit can result in global good news

Doncaster used to be a name that triggered shame about Labour’s local government corruption – “Donnygate” and all that, which saw councillors and officers appearing in court on a regular basis. But forget political disgrace. The town is now a laughing stock, courtesy of the new barmpot Mayor, Peter Davies. He was elected in May, as an English Democrat, on the back of revulsion against the main political parties. Labour, traditionally rulers in this old railway borough, came third.

Most people did not share the malevolence demonstrated by The Sun. Its story of the Prime Minister’s allegedly shoddy handwritten letter of condolence to a grief-stricken mother of another tragic victim of the war in Afghanistan, written up as a further onslaught on Gordon Brown, backfired.