The electoral equivalent of the norovirus.

"the electoral equivalent of the norovirus"

A description of Mr and Mrs Blair's contribution to the Labour Party's election campaign, by Paul Scott in the Mail.

Other gems odds and ends from the same article are :

[Mrs Blair] is free to lend support to the Labour Party in the election campaign, she has found her offers of help have been met with a deafening - and distinctly embarrassing - silence

Unfortunately - no, no, don't laugh.

Mrs Blair's diary is so blank that she has committed to attending a book signing to plug her memoirs at a literary festival in Swindon just three days before the election on May 6.

Given that the book in question has already been on the shelves for two years and sold the paltry total of 354 copies in the three months to the end of last year, it hardly seems a pressing engagement.

Champagne Socialists? The Blairs? No, no, it can't be true that ...

... the couple's eldest son, Euan, has just received a six-figure bonus from investment bank Morgan Stanley, where he has worked for the past three years.

Hmm, what was that about planned legislation concerning bankers and their bonuses?

Tony and Cherie already have a £3.7million London home in Connaught Square, a £5.75 million country home in Buckinghamshire and a £1.13million central London mews house that Cherie bought for their 23-year-old son, Nicky, last October.

and

[Mrs Blair] is [planning to spend] in the region on £1.5million on a London house for 26-year-old Euan because he is said by family friends to have 'outgrown' [his] £550,000 Islington flat

That'll be the Euan who just earned himself the six figure bonus, and can't afford to buy his own place. Goes to show he's really just the same as all the other young graduates who are struggling to pay off their student loans - to pay fees imposed by the government during his father's term as Prime Minister.

Mr Blair is estimated to have made in excess of £25million since quitting Number 10 in June 2007.

It's perhaps no wonder he doesn't visit Britain very often, Brown's tax policies would make a nasty dent in all that money. Odd though, that Mr Blair only donated, what was it, £14,000 or £40,000 to Labour's election campaign? That much will have been just a bit of loose change, cash down the back of the settee sort of thing.

Don't you just love it when you can see true Socialism in practice. Practised by all those rich people who are making absolutely sure they share their money around, who are helping out those who are poorer, who are pulling children out of poverty and such like, who are being true philanthropists ...

Ah, but that doesn't seem to be going so well either, because Mrs Blair has just 'donated',

... £250,000 to the Cherie Blair Foundation For Women, whose offices are located above a burger bar in London's Oxford Street, to help pay staff wages

It would also seem that

Mrs Blair ... has been riled by stories claiming her supporters are attempting to have her made a baroness with a seat in the House of Lords.

She's riled because she thinks it's all a smokescreen, devised by ...

... [Mr Brown who] wants to deflect attention from what are said to be his own private plans to make his wife Sarah a dame when he eventually leaves office.

Oh, but all this is just gossipy, over the garden fence sort of stuff. It's all in the Mail so can't possible be true. It can't be true that

Cherie's relationship with ... Gordon Brown remains as bitter as ever.

Surely they were the best of friends, so it can't be true.

Can it?

....