Tony Blair concluded his re-election campaign by making a journey slow and circuitous even by the standards of British transport after eight years of Labour rule from London to his home constituency of Sedgefield via Lancashire, Scotland and Yorkshire. Thus ended the last of his three prime ministerial contests: perhaps the strangest and certainly the most bad tempered of all modern elections in which politicians, media and voters have vied to appear the most grudging and apathetic. Not so much a last hurrah, more a last harrumph.

Mr Blair concluded the national formalities with a morning press conference in (marginal) Finchley and an evening rally in (marginal) Scarborough. Then he returned to (theoretically impregnable) Sedgefield. He spoke to the Scarborough faithful in a far smaller hall than the one that saw so many of Labour's most famous conference speeches. And here a portion of the unfaithful got wind of his arrival and were allowed to stand outside protesting against those twin evils: the war and the possible closure of Whitby hospital. In the evening sunlight, a lone figure patrolled the beach, tracing the words BLAIR OUT with his boot.