Coming soon?

We all know that Mandelson was bought in to co-ordinate Labour's general election campaign. The red party have suddenly realised they're going to have to call one soon and seemed a bit at sea without a strategy.

Now this Osbourne story doesn't really have any legs. As he never accepted a donation he's not done anything wrong. Fan it all you can, and it'll smoke and smoke without ever catching fire.

But the times is going really hard on Osbourne which either mean he's upset someone personally, or they're getting support from other quarters. My suspicion is that Mandelson is behind the briefing and this is the first in a series of short-term negative attacks over the next few months - with the intention to level the polls sufficiently to call a snap election very early next year.

Labour have learnt to their cost in the past that negative campaigning doesn't work, but with the position that they're in at the moment it seems to be the only technique they have left.