The Campaign Today with Nick Robinson

Follow the start of week two of the campaign, as brought to you throughout the day by Nick Robinson.

Last updated at 10.12pm
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1am
What do you know? The Tories have cancelled their morning news conference and Oliver

Yesterday's FT, which kicked off this row

Letwin - the alleged source of the Tories £20 billion indiscretion - is nowhere to be found even though his party insist he's available for interview. If you've spotted him, do let me know! One senior Tory strategist told me that all would be fine if Mr Letwin hadn't "mouthed off" about taxes. His crime seems to be to say what all the Tory front bench think but aren't ready to say in front of the voters.

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12 noon
There's no sign of Oliver Letwin. He's not been flushed out by Labour's gag "Wanted" posters. He hasn't, it's alleged, been seen even in his Dorset constituency. Now his boss, the shadow chancellor Michael Portillo, seemed to want to avoid the question this morning at a poster launch when he brushed aside questions about Mr Letwin's alleged indiscretion to the Financial Times about £20bn of tax cuts.

But the Tories have cottoned on that we are saying that they're not facing the music, and now Michael Portillo is doing a round of the radio and television studios to demonstrate that he can answer those questions.

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12.30pm

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1pm
Charles Kennedy was in characteristic good humour this morning (Click to listen)

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1.30pm
Well it's from Geri to Willie. Not exact parallels but the Tories are aping a campaign commercial which was first used in support of George Bush when he ran for president against Michael Dukakis all those years ago. Willie Horton was a rapist who had been released early, it had been said by the Bush campaign, in the state of Massachusetts and they used an ad showing him to illustrate how weak Dukakis was on the issue of crime.

Well the Tories have copied that idea. Not by naming names, admittedly, but by bleak images, dark images, threatening music, trying to build up fear about what they say is Labour's early release scheme. What's fascinating is that they want to kick up a controversy on this. They want a row because they know they need attention, and a row itself might actually help them.

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3.26pm
WAITNG FOR BLAIR TO MAKE SPEECH ON TORY SPENDING - ITS BEEN THE FIRST BREAK IN THIS CAMPAIGN + THEY WANT TO KEEP THE STORY ROLLING

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3.44pm
We've had some Labour reaction to the election broadcast I was talking about earlier. Labour doesn't want to fall into the Tory trap of kicking up a fuss about tonight's broadcast. But Paul Boateng has called it "dire and desperate" and "a deliberate distortion". The party learnt from the Demon Eyes poster last time that attacking the message only gives publicity to the messenger.

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10.12pm
An example tonight of what the Tories always feared might mar this campaign - a return to stories about splits, and splits about Europe.

They are outraged, they think this story's unjustified, they think there is no evidence to back it up, but the fact that a few maverick Tory backbenchers have signed up to the idea of a referendum for the withdrawal from Europe has got the story going - even though it seems there are more Labour MPs who are also backing the idea.

It's opened up the idea that there are Tories who secretly want to withdraw from Europe, and William Hague making it clear that he would tolerate this and not discipline them has added to that sense.

The Tories perfectly fairly say that they do not impose discipline on Ken Clarke for his views or these people, its only for those on the front bench. But it shows how sensitive this is that the slightest hint of debate on Europe gets the stories running on splits and gets the Tories worried. It's going to be a real problem for them to control this in the weeks to come.

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