Campaign Hotting Up.

Harold Wilson, about 45 years ago, uttered the phrase "a week is a long time in politics". This has become synonymous with anything political that seems to drag on and where fortunes change rapidly.

Imagine what he would have said if he were alive today, where news coverage is 24hrs and headlines change from minute to minute. He probably would have sucked his pipe (wouldn't be allowed to light it of course) sat back and offered some informed view and returned any question with a question of his own that would have had the interviewer on the back foot.

Such was the stature of the man that he could cope with most of the big guns in the media, including the late and lamented Robin Day.

So what has this to do with the bye-election in Borehamwood North? Well we are now only 12 days to polling and so far there seems to have been very little campaigning by my Conservative opponent Rabbi Alan Plancey although I do expect that to change.

What is more to the point, however, is his lack of saying anything on the mess his party have got themslves into over their Polish and Latvian partners in Europe.

This Sunday's Observer had a piece by Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, where he cranked up the pressure once again by accusing William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, of calling their right wing Polish partner and Nazi sympathiser, Michal Kaminski "a good friend" to the party.

I realise that this is a local election in Borehamwood, but the reason for my prolonged attack on this issue is because we have, in Borehamwood and Elstree, one of the biggest Jewish communities around. You would think that the former leader of that community would have something to say? The silence though continues, but what else could we expect when the Rabbi has even dropped the title from the ballot paper, so he is plain old Alan Plancey. One wonders what he is trying to hide?

We can only live in hope that he will, in the next 12 days, condemn his party leader's stupidity.

After all if a week is a long time in politics, 12 days must be an absolute age!