PUTTING up as Labour's parliamentary candidate in the staunchly-Tory Ribble Valley is an exercise as generally futile as standing as a Conservative in Burnley -- success being gauged by coming a decent, rather than poor, third with your deposit intact.

So what, other than maintaining the tradition of pointless pantomime, can Labour candidate Marcus Johnstone be about when he carps about Valley MP Nigel Evans having gone to the Wimbledon tennis final as a the guest of a cigarette company and then voting in the Commons -- some 18 months afterwards, mind -- against a ban on tobacco advertising?

As far as timing goes, Mr Johnstone could hardly have picked a better time -- when were are currently reminded that this is not a solely Tory province, thanks to Peter Mandelson being ousted for a second time from the Cabinet from amid the murk of the favours-for-a-passport affair involving him and one of the Indian billionaire Hinduja brothers surrounded by corruption allegations.

Indeed, as far as claims of influence in the world of tobacco advertising are concerned, Mr Mandelson's downfall has also dredged up old doubts about New Labour's probity over its exempting Formula One motor racing from its proposed tobacco advertising ban after the sport's controlling mogul Bernie Ecclestone was revealed to have given the party a £1million donation.

At the fag end of such concerns -- with shopkeeper Mr Evans' Wimbledon hospitality ticket from Imperial Tobacco in 1999 being rated as worth some £150 (Wow!) -- it would seem that Mr Johnstone is, in line with his hopes in the Ribble Valley, barking in the wind over nothing very much at all. And to whose consternation?

But if, rather than the amounts involved, it is principle that counts, has not Mr Evans demonstrated that in this debate -- owning up to his acceptance of the hospitality, recording it in the register of MPs' interests, declaring his interest as a retail tobacconist and voting as he did against a "politically-correct" advertising ban after telling the Commons that his father died from smoking, aged only 59?