Not Seltzer, but Andrew Marr the current Political Editor at the BBC (rumoured to be evacuating that post to become Frost's sucessor). This morning at the end of the Today Programme on Radio 4 there was a little roundup interview with him about the state of play for the Tories.
The morning papers are concentrating on how the Tories are stuck on 31-33% and that their immigration pitch is frightening more away than its sucking in. No complicated analysis that, the point of the immigration policy is to remove UKIP as a threat to their vote (no mention of the EU at all in this election from anyone, notice) and their taxation, or reduction of it, is a bribe to wavering Labour voters.
It isn't so much that the immigration policy is frightening them away (labour voters can be bigots too), as that Howard just isn't believed on taxes, the Tories have no Gordon Brown.
Anyway, I was talking about Andrew Marr. At the end of his summation he said that senior Tories were in a bit of a state as they hadn't made any inroads at all and that there were some difficult tactics they had to decide on as to breaking the deadlock. If they pursued the immigration policy further and emphasised social unrest and disorder then the liberal media would be nailing them day after day and if they brought out the argument that another Labour landslide or large majority would be bad for the country (which it undoubtedly would), then it would appear that they were capitulating.
Immediately after this I watched the Tory morning Press Conference on the Parliament channel and, after a few questions zonking them in the gut about their lack of performance and how the immigration policy isn't working with Murdoch from the other journalists, Andrew Marr asked 'What can you say about, as appears to be the case with the state of the polls, another large Labour majority?'.
Which Howard dealt with reasonably well without stepping into the trap of seeming to capitulate but basically repeated the Tory message of the day which is 'Do you want more just talk from Tony Blair'.
And that prompted me to think, was Andrew Marr actually laying an early trap, heightening the idea that there will be a large majority, or offering an easy ball to Howard to give him the opportunity to show that there really is some fight in the election?
I can't tell and in truth it might be a lot simpler than that and that it was just what occurred to him during the summation he made on the radio just two minutes before.
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