TWO weeks into the three week election campaign and it is reduced to this: "Liar, liar, pants on fire."

"Oh no, I'm not."

"Oh yes, you are."

Behind you - can't you see the electorate is turning off?

Politicians wonder why the public rates them lower than estate agents, used car salesman and, of course, journalists. They wonder why the public thinks that they cannot be trusted, that they are only in it for themselves.

They wonder and worry about this for the length of a Parliament. And then they spend the three weeks of the election campaign slagging one another off. Calling one another "liar". Drawing each other's faces on flying pigs - very much in the way that naughty schoolboys feel compelled to draw a moustache and round glasses on a picture of the headmaster.

If Britain's is a democracy that is the envy of the world, surely we can improve upon the level of democratic debate?

The Conservatives, in launching a very bitter and personal attack on Tony Blair, are damaging Mr Blair. But they are also damaging their own profession and their own public standing.

They also risk the election turning nastily nuclear, with Labour turning its attention to Mr Howard's political past, which is also littered with misjudgements like the poll tax.

To be even-handed, Labour started the campaign with its ill-advised flying pig posters, and the Liberal Democrats have been parading a turncoat Labour MP Brian Sedgemore, who accuses Mr Blair of "stomach-turning lies". With politicians so cynical about one another, it is hardly surprising that the public cynically wondered why Mr Sedgemore had waited until he had retired before coming out with his criticisms - could it have been anything to do with the comfort of his pay cheque?

Yet this election should indeed be about "forward not back". It should be about which party has the most appealing programme to govern Britain for the next five years, and which party is best-placed to deliver that programme.

"Yahboosucks" does not assist that debate and it will do very little to enthuse an uninterested electorate.