"You know what I know, make no mistake about it, the Conservatives can win this general election." A little of that went a long way, and a lot of it glazed the eyes like a Ming vase ­ not just your eyes but Hague's too.Further down the script, however, a bell rang. Hague mentioned the great unmentionable, the Millennium Dome! He said the present government was "too embarrassed to knock it down". He forgot to add that the last Conservative government hadn't been too embarrassed about the idea of putting it up. Nevertheless, here was a hint of what Hague's campaign might conceivably be doing instead of trying to reassure the dwindling Tory faithful that their leadership elite still shares their prejudices: it could have been attacking Blair's administration on the mess it had made out of running things. It would need boldness from the Hague squad to attack foul-ups whose origin can be traced to their own party, but boldness Hague has, if it could only be used. Instead, with a target such as transport wide open to be bombed, all the Tories can say about Prescott is that he has the wrong instincts about incoming eggs.As any Labour voter who rides the London Tube is painfully aware, Prescott has a lot more to answer for than that.

The transport snafu amounts to a national emergency, and few of the other public services are in much better shape. Yet the new all-Blair PEB is inviting an attack that never comes. "Work that we've started," burbles Blair, "and that we need to finish." You can say that again And indeed he does say it again. "We've made a start but haven't finished it." How good a start? And how can you ever finish, if everything you have so far done compounds the shambles? The Tories never ask and even the Lib Dems don't go far beyond suggesting that more tax money is the solution.Although Portillo has given the occasional polite hint, there is nobody to say outright, and say often, that the public services are a question of organisation.

Labour is proposing a new way of organising the health service, but it ought to look incredible about proposing a new way of organising anything. Britain isn't producing enough teachers to teach its own language. Britain can't lay a railway line that doesn't warp in the remorseless heat of its equatorial climate. Britain can't get rid of a Dome it didn't know how to open for crowds that never came to see the marvels it did not contain It's Blair's Britain that can't do these things. So let's get the bastard.That last sentiment is not one I share, finding as I do that Blair's repertoire of special voices arouses sympathy, rather in the way that a chameleon crossing a tartan kilt might make you want to pick it up and give it a rest. But why the other parties aren't beating the crap out of his reputation for competence is one of the great mysteries of this greatly fascinating election. On the whole they are proposing to do what he does but either use less money (Tories) or more (Lib Dems).