Fraser Nelson

We have just witnessed a fascinating glimpse of the use of the internet in elections. This morning, Cameron proposed a unilateral bank tax - moving, I suspect, ahead of what he believes Darling will announce in next week's budget. Next, at 1.19pm, Will Straw digs up a selectively-edited version of Chris Grayling speaking in his local constituency (put online by the Labour candidate, Craig Montgomery). Straw's headline: "Calamity Grayling opposes Cameron’s unilateral bank tax." Now, this headline - a lie - might have worked on a Labour Party press release. But it's far harder to lie on a blog. Grayling is quoted saying "there is absolutely no point on earth is any one country doing this unilaterally, because otherwise all the banking transactions will simply move to another one".

Listening to BBC news, it's striking how they are still using Labour's politically-charged vocabulary. When the universities are kicking off about their budgets being cut, the BBC newsreaders are told to talk about "investment" in higher education, rather than spending. Why, though? An "investment" would be to put £1 billion of taxpayers’ money into an Emerging Markets fund, and hope it grows. Giving it to universities - many of which serve neither students nor society - is not an investment. But using the word "investment" is Labour code for "good spending". There is one particularly frequent example if this: the BBC regularly confuse the words "deficit" and "debt" - a bugbear of mine, and something James Forsyth deals with in his column in this week's magazine.

Gordon Brown has been shameless in using the tools of state to advance his party political objectives – to him, government is electoral war by other means. Anyone who has turned on a commercial radio station recently will have worked out his latest trick: a mass propaganda splurge before an election campaign. Get on a bus, and it can be 100 percent state adverts – advising how Big Brother will help you get a job, buy a car, see off door-to-door salesmen, give you a job in the prison services – anything you want. We at The Spectator have tracked down the figures that show the extent of all this. State advertising was £13 million in December – yet surged to £34 million last month.

Heaven forbid that the Tories and LibDems end up in coalition - but the Guardian asked me to write a piece war-gaming what would happen if they did. The result is here. I really do believe it would be a short-lived calamity because no one would be playing for the long-term. The Westminster system does not handle coalitions, and hung parliaments lead to second elections. From day one of any Lib-Con coalition, everyone would have an eye on that second election. The Tories would want to accuse the LibDems of recklessly pulling the plug, the LibDems would be briefing against the Tories making out that they were the only competent ones in the coalition.

One of the Brownie's we've been hearing recently from the Dear Leader is that it is in some way ambitious to "halve the deficit by 2014". It's a Brownie because it is technically accurate, yet designed to mislead the voter. Two years ago, he forecast no deficit at all by 2014. Now he's projecting one of 5 percent of GDP - simply mammoth - and still makes out that this is something to be proud of. It's a confidence trick: the voter is supposed to think 'I don't know about the figures, but if he's boasting about it then it must be good'.

Nick Clegg has a blue rose in his mouth in tomorrow's Spectator, serenading readers - and showing his hidden Tory side. I have to say, he puts his heart into it. Not only does the Lib Dem leader say he'll end the structural deficit with 100 percent spending cuts (not the 20 percent tax rises, 80 percent cuts combo that the Tories advocate), but he even heaps praise in Lady Thatcher. More, he describes her as something of an inspiration: just as she took on vested interests in the 1980s, so he will take on the banks now.   Personally, I can't quite see the equivalence - and Clegg as the Heir to Thatcher is an image that I just can't conjure in my mind. But you can't blame him for trying.

Might Gordon Brown get away with it at the Chilcot Inquiry today? I suspect so. The media seems obsessed with the run-up to war, whereas the real crime was the betrayal of Basra. Brown made false claims to Parliament about the fall of violence in the city which, as he would have known, was being left in the hands of Shiite death squads. He would have known that, as the Chilcot Inquiry established, we had just a couple of hundred soldiers trying to keep peace in a city of millions. He misled Britain out of Basra as knowingly and mendaciously as Blair led Britain into Iraq - leaving the people of Basra at the mercy of the militiamen. That is, until the Iraq army (with US support) invaded the city again, and expelled the murderous regime to whom Britain had, under Brown, handed power.

Should the Tories talk about immigration? This will bring back a lot of bad memories for the modernisers, who believe that this hurt them in 2005. But, as Tim Montgomerie says over at CiF today, the picture has transformed since then. The total number of immigrant workers has risen 25 per cent, to 3.5 million. And nationally, immigrants now make up a remarkable 15 percent of the workforce (see graph below) – which puts us up there with America. Except our immigration is handled in a haphazard way that creates plenty of bad feeling. Talk to a Tory candidate and they will say there’s only one issue that gets cut-through on the doorsteps. And, so, all parties seem to be adopting a “shout it locally, say nothing nationally” approach to immigration.

Is the Sunday Times poll a hammer blow to the Tories, or a gift from God? It sounds a weird question, but think of the logic. So far, Cameron’s big mistake was to allow the campaign to become a referendum on him. He was desperate to turn that into a basic question: do you want five more years of Brown? Until now, the voters’ response would be “yeah, right. Brown is going down. The question is whether I’m enthusiastic about you lot, with your fuzzy green tree logo and your lack of any discernable agenda, and the answer is no”. As James said, the message “five more years of Brown” was the main one that the Tories were trying to convey yesterday at the conference. And now the two-point YouGov lead makes this into a realistic prospect.

If any CoffeeHousers have been feeling despondent about the Tores, I have the perfect tonic: Cameron’s YouTube video released today. In my News of the World column last week, I listed five messages I thought he should give. And he ticked all of them off - and then some. It was one of those biannual events: where Cameron gives a speech that he obviously wrote himself, and put a lot of energy into it. And the result is always great. Now, this may be a wavelength thing: some CoffeeHousers may see a whole load of cliches. But I see in here an agenda for change – plus some clever debating tactics. He starts by doing what I’ve longed for the Tories to do: frame the debate.