But he remains the wild card in the campaign and will come over as the least manufactured of the three leaders. Expect him to perform well, although he will be better at the mood music than detailed policy.L is for Leo. The Blairs have always insisted that their youngest son, whose first birthday falls in the likely election month of May, will not be used to woo Middle England. Even so, they have not always been able to resist the temptation. Leo played a starring role on the front of the Blairs’ Christmas card.

And if the campaign starts to go badly wrong for Labour, expect Leo to play a decisive role.M is for Mandelson. Mr Blair’s respect for Peter Mandelson’s strategic powers has rarely wavered during the Northern Ireland Secretary’s wildly oscillating career, and he will be brought back from Belfast to help Gordon Brown mastermind the campaign “Tony’s addicted to Peter It’s like a drug,” according to one Downing Street insider. Mr Brown does not share the addiction (see B)N is for Archie Norman. The former Asda boss, who now shadows John Prescott, is close to Hague but critical of the leader’s authoritarian streak. Seen as an important player in any future leadership contest.O is for Opinion Polls The polls tend to overstate Labour’s lead. In this parliament there has been a marked difference between actual elections, when Labour has tended to perform poorly, and polls that suggested the Government was heading for a landslide.

Labour went behind in the polls only once in this parliament, last September during the fuel dispute. Mr Blair was panicked by the dispute, but not by the drop in the polls. He appeared almost relieved that the Government had become fleetingly unpopular.P is for Portillo. Relations between Mr Hague and his Shadow Chancellor remain awkward, but Michael Portillo is likely to be the most prominent Tory frontbencher in the media P is also for John Prescott. The Deputy Prime Minister is being sent out on his bus again. As one senior minister put it: “Prescott’s being sent around the country, Cook’s being sent around the world. That leaves Brown and Mandelson to run the campaign.”Q is for the Queen.

In 1974, with a hung parliament, there was a moment when she might have had to decide between Wilson and Heath. In the event, it never came to it, and this year the contest looks much less close But you never know.R is for Rumours. We have four months of this to come and newspapers will be looking for stories to fill the vacuum. Paddy Ashdown’s diaries reveal his worries that newspapers would publish stories during the 1992 campaign about alleged affairs. In the event no newspaper did so, but how many senior politicians have similar worries now?S is for The Sun. It will almost certainly back Labour, although it opposes large swaths of government policy. Mr Blair has reassured Rupert Murdoch that there will not be an early referendum on the euro.

But Mr Blair is not delaying the referendum for Mr Murdoch’s benefit alone. He does not believe it will be winnable for at least another year anyway.T is for turnout This is the big one. Labour is worried that a combination of complacency and indifference will deter supporters from casting their votes. That is one of the reasons why Mr Blair is placing such an emphasis on public services, and why Mr Brown will target tax cuts on the less well-off.