Can Labour be derailed in Crewe?

By Ben Wright
Political correspondent, BBC News

David Cameron said his boyhood ambition had been to be a lorry driver

The green engine had been moved into position before the press arrived.

It loomed in a corner of the huge Freightliner railway yard with an anxious-looking man waiting high up in the cab.

The special guest was late. Signal failure at Bletchley.

The press was getting tetchy and lobbed questions at the driver about his political preferences.

But then the cameras swivelled round to catch the group of Conservatives walking towards them, their well-cut suits camouflaged in orange fluorescent jackets.

Lorry driver

David Cameron and the Conservative candidate Edward Timpson strolled towards the engine. We knew what was coming and felt a twinge of sympathy for the train.

Up the little ladder they went and into the cab. David Cameron got the seat closest to the cameras and nonchalantly rested his arm on the sill of the open window.

Gosh, they were excited, all grins and swirling arms.

We're not lying about him. He is very wealthy. He is a toff. He did go to public school. What's wrong with saying it? Frank Dobson MP, on Tory candidate Edward Timpson

"Did you want to be a train driver, Mr Cameron?" shouted one hack.

"No, a lorry driver!" came the rather implausible reply.

Then with an energetic leap out of the engine they were back on the gravel.

The cameras clicked away, capturing the message: "Conservatives like trains."

'Class war'

I asked Mr Cameron about Labour's efforts to pick on the rich Mr Timpson.

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"By playing games of class war the Labour party is hugely mistaken," he said.

"The whole country has moved on from that.

"I don't think the people in this constituency will be taken in by it."

But canvassing in Nantwich, the affluent, conservative-leaning half of the constituency, the Labour MP Frank Dobson was unrepentant.

"We're not lying about him. He is very wealthy. He is a toff. He did go to public school. What's wrong with saying it?

"Crewe's a workaday place and he's not exactly a workaday candidate."

Maybe not. But he does seem to like trains. As, apparently, do the Liberal Democrats, who stopped by the Bombardier railway repair plant to pose next to piles of bogies and reconditioned carriages.

The party thinks the Labour vote here is very soft and that's where they will get fresh support.

Nick Clegg was here on his third campaign visit and said his efforts wouldn't be derailed by an invigorated Conservative Party.

Nick Clegg insisted there was "all to play for" in Crewe

"Of course we believe we can win this election," Mr Clegg said.

"The last week of a short by-election like this is the most crucial period and there is genuinely all to play for."

Talking of derailing, one of the campaigns said they're keeping a running tally of painful train-related cliches cropping up in the press.

So, if Labour doesn't persuade its crotchety core vote to get out next Thursday, Crewe could be an important electoral stop on the party's shunt into the buffers.

And then it would be all change.