So says The Guardian:

The Labour party has approached agencies to pitch for its advertising account as it gears up for a possible general election campaign.

Campaign Magazine also says:

Beattie McGuinness Bungay, Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, Clemmow Hornby Inge and Partners, VCCP and the digital agency Profero are understood to be among the agencies contacted.

Labour seems to be gearing up for one with the appointment of Jon Mendelsohn to a key general election post.

Of the various people who only briefly feature in Alistair Campbell’s published diaries his is perhaps the oddest cameo – spending most of the day sitting in a pub in case President Bill Clinton visited it.

There’s an interesting piece from 1998 on Jon Mendelsohn’s business background here, which includes the comment:

Mr Mendelsohn, who used to handle Mr Blair’s business contacts, retains close – some say too close – links with … Lord Levy, the party’s fund-raiser.

His lobbying firm of …

If so, Vince Cable wants to know them.

If you’d been following Gordon Brown’s comments about terrorism in the media, you could be forgiven for thinking that he doesn’t want to score party political points on the matter, and in fact wants cross-party consensus.

Just look at what Patrick Wintour wrote in The Guardian, what Sky News reported or what Philip Johnson wrote in The Telegraph.

They all talked about how Gordon Brown wants consensus. Sounds fairly reasonable doesn’t it? All parties pull together for the common good in the face of threats to our security, etc etc.

Only one problem with this picture. It’s that small matter of …

David Cameron’s “arrogant Old Etonian” approach has cost him the support of Tom Cowie, who until now has been one of the Conservative Party’s top donors, giving over £630,000 to the party since 2001.

Tom Cowie, president of Arriva (the bus and train company) will instead donate funds in future to the Prince’s Trust:

“The Tory party seems to be run now by Old Etonians and they don’t seem to understand how other people live. They seem to be very arrogant like I suppose Old Etonians can be.”

More details in The Guardian.

UPDATE: Barcharters Anonymous has a good round up of recent Tory …

Chris Huhne today attacked Gordon Brown’s green credentials, pointing out that he has just downgraded the Government’s top committee dealing with environmental matters and axed completely another key body. Not exactly a sign of taking the issue seriously…

The Liberal Democrats have just kicked off a new transport policy making process. A consultation document will be produced ready for debate at the Spring 2008 conference, but you need not wait until then to start having your say. The first stages of the online consultation are already up and running over on the party’s policy consultation website.

From today’s edition of The Herald:

Scottish Labour lost the May election because of infighting over control, a poorly thought out manifesto and the facts that the party had little momentum or a positive message …

The Colwell memo states the campaign was “relentlessly negative with little that can be judged to be positive.

“The national organisation was hampered by in-fighting over who was in control, while local organisation was patchy. It seemed that the party has been hollowed out,” though in some places candidate effort and headquarters support made a difference.

Full story on The Herald’s website.

I suspect most politicians have used the “it’s a hypothetical question” reason to avoid answering a question. Over at Slate there’s an interesting piece praising Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama for his enthusiasm in answering hypotheticals, which very much sets him out from the crowd.

Hat tip: Comment Central.