The main focus of all this is Tony Blair trying desperatly hard not to be undermined by one of the few traditional Labour members still standing. What I mean is someone that stands for the Left Wing traditionalist policies that they were built upon that catered for the Working Class. Step forward Ken Livingstone.

After the tragic loss of John Smith, who was starting to get the Party back on track after the years of failure under Neil Kinnock with a solid campaign going before being murdered on the NHS (well, that's my view of the situation), in comes The Blair Witch and converts them into a Right Wing, PR orientated, backtracking, unoriginal group of cronies. When they swept into Government in 1997 all they did was change from a Conservative Government to a conservative Government (with much better packaging and a soundtrack from D:Ream).

Ever since then, The Human Soundbite Machine has pissed on another benchmark policy or done his best to emulate (God, Buddha, Jah, Allah, Satan, Waheguru and all those I forgot forbid) Maggie Thatcher.

But that's enough of the basic history of New Labour. Time to get back on track.

The original sandstorm blew up around the Conservative candidates all being dropped due to sleaze allegations (translation: being rather naughty boys and getting caught, but the papers have to put it that way), seeing the tragic loss of Jeffrey Archer as a result. No, seriously, who wouldn't find it funny to see him fail miserably? Then again, he'd have to write more books to get his money back, so we got a fair compromise I guess.

But then TB gets in on the act by touting Frank Dobson as his candidate, whilst Livingstone, with far more support-who also wanted to take up the job, unlike Dobson-got ignored. And to take the wind out of his sails, suddenly Cherie gets pregnant which got all the paper coverage. PM does not traditionally translate as 'Petulant Motherfucker', so why has the definition been changed somewhat?

Then came the time for voting. Just to make sure that Ken didn't get in the way of progress (next stop Poland...), the ballot was fixed so that even after Livingstone won through that way, Dobson got the Labour slot.

Since then John Prescott has pulled himself away from the mountain of pies to try to convince Ken to stay in the party and support Dobson (official line), to try to prevent him standing as an independent candidate. Mostly because if he did he would get a landslide victory by Lunchtime on Polling Day and, as said before, undermine the Iron Fist of Blair. Tory voters would vote for him this way, as will traditional Labour voters and the masses sick to death of the Labour (PR) Machine they threatened would crush him. Traditional Tory smear campaign in other words.

Barring the Lib Dem candidate, the only other story of note is that Malcolm McLaren is also going to stand as an independent. Ironic, since Anarchy in the UK seems to be a fine way of putting it...