So I have just got back from Victoria to see how things are progressing at campaign HQ and I have a few observations. Firstly. My desk. Seriously? I've seen smack dealers at Glastonbury operating out of plusher shitters than my "office". And when I put word about that I was not impressed, the other accommodation opportunity offered me by Dougie Alexander's strutting young spunk was the wireless password for a branch of Giraffe cafe in King's Cross. This is not remotely working for me.
What I suspect has happened is the frank tone of my first briefing (and the private one I sent you midweek, puckishly entitled: "Your campaign team eat the donkey dick") has put a few noses out of joint. Well, yes I'm going to give you tough advice. That is how I roll. My rule of thumb is: if you don't want to know about the tumour, don't ask to see the doctor. If you come to my suburban bondage establishment, I will knock you about and call you bad names. That's just the service I provide.
But please reassure the minions and old timers that I will be unobtrusive while I keep an eye on things. I will be crouching the other side of an invisible line, behind an imaginary Chinese wall inside a transparent box wearing a different hat, running a computer simulation of the current situation from behind an informal desk fellating a made-up banana. They are not to worry about me. Not until I creep up in the dead of night and hit them over the head with a piece of two-by-four with a single six-inch nail sticking out of it.
Anyway, on the themes you are starting to hit this week. I have some notes:
Optimism: Talking to the manifesto children in the war room, they are all very excited about optimism. I don't know where they found it but now they've opened the pot they want to smear it over everything. The New Britain. An Internet. A train like those we have seen on our holidays, that goes. A knowledge-based carbon-fibre tennis-racket economy. A windmill. A new dawn. Give our nuclear subs to the French. My take is – yeah, fine. Maybe. But remember your key attributes: not JFK skipping through the flowers spraying Clinton juice all over everyone. No – the glowering maniac in the boarded-up house who, if we're lucky, people might just about believe is the only one who can remember where the bank statements are kept. That's the core strategy.
Staying on: Re your Woman's Hour "I'll keep going" in the event of not securing a majority. It's obviously good to look permanent. The rock of ages. Continents move, elections come and go, majorities grow and wither, but you, the rock of ages, hard, impervious, massive, underlying, difficult to get tent pegs into, you remain.
That can obviously play well. But with the promise to stick around whatever happens, you need to avoid the whiff of the junta. We want people to think of you as a trustworthy if slightly cranky old professor they can go to in times of trouble. Like white-bearded Mr Shorofsky in Fame. We don't want the public to think that to get you out of No 10, Cracker is going to have to be called out of retirement to reason with you through a locked door as you squat on the cabinet table with no trousers on, Maggie Darling as a hostage, and a borrowed Glock 17 pointed at your own nuts issuing demands for a Government of National Unity. So careful how we play that one.
Clegg: This week's media angle has been: Clegg the kingmaker. Yeah, right. This guy couldn't make a king out of a two-piece Duplo "Make a King" kit without putting the arse on the head.
Also. In regard to Clegg, one good thing about you is that you do look like a person. We should keep pushing this. You don't have the Clegg/Osborne wipe-down plastic surface look. That lemon up the bum, orange in the mouth look the public so love to hate. Let's keep hitting that.
Regards to you, Malcolm.