It began on the very night of Tony Blair's "landslide" general election victory in 1997 - New Labour's ruthless manipulation of its image.

The scenes in Downing Street, which I and, I am sure, most other people took as mirroring the general feeling of relief at the end of 18 years of Thatcherism, were a sham. For the cheering onlookers as Tony Blair arrived were not citizens who had turned up of their own volition but Labour supporters bussed in for the occasion. Unless this is made clear whenever the TV footage is re-run history will be distorted.

Now fast forward to the present. How many people, do you suppose, would go out of their way to watch Tony Blair and Gordon Brown unveil an election poster? Celebrities will always attract attention of course. But, faced with top politicians engaged on a election stunt, most people would probably give them a wide berth.

Those keenest to get close would probably be those with grievances to air. Since these can inflict mortal (political) damage, they are best kept out of it. The most effective way is not to announce the public appearance. But how, then, do you prevent the political leaders appearing in a vacuum?

Enter "endorsers", people carefully selected to form a small (and generally docile-looking) crowd.

It was as "endorsers" that the Virgo family of Bethnal Green - mum, dad and three young kids - looked on with others as Blair and Brown unveiled a "Tory-tax-cuts" poster at Billingsgate fish market. "They gave us a nice breakfast," said Mr Virgo, who was known to New Labour through having written to his MP.

Alas, the family's freebie breakfast will probably be its last. For Mrs Virgo, with her infant son, had appeared in an earlier "endorsers" group. Her face in the crowd a second time helped to give the game away.

Devised by Alastair Campbell, the endorsers' strategy sums up the fundamental dishonesty now almost synonymous with New Labour. The Tory's current election mantra: "What You See Is What You Get" should of course be taken for granted in every aspect of any honourable political party's activities. But Tony Blair has now added Soviet-style image manipulation to the "banana republic" risks inherent in the postal voting that he is determined to extend despite the alarming vote-rigging in Birmingham.

What matters is hanging on to power at any cost.

William Hague's election leaflet is to hand. It fails to mention the Tory promise to repeal the Hunting Act virtually the moment the party gains power. Could it be that William, astute politican that he is, recognises that, even in his deeply rural fiefdom of Richmond, hunting doesn't command quite the universal support that the fuss kicked up by the hunters suggests?

The Pope is gone. No doubt God will preserve his soul. Looking at the millions who filled every square inch of Rome for the funeral, it was hard to think that not one of them practised or believed in birth control. And afterwards it was impossible not to reflect, sadly, that whatever profound spiritual inspiration the pilgrims drew from the saintly John Paul II did not inhibit them from turning St Peter's Square and the rest of Rome into a pig sty with their litter.