WHAT I find amazing about Labour at last being shown up by the Mandelson affair and the revelations about Robin Cook as no different from the rest is not that the party has suffered in the opinion polls, with its rating slipping below 50% for the first time since taking power, but that the Tories have not benefited as a result.

Indeed, the polls show the Conservatives are less popular than they were at the general election - which says a lot. What's wrong with them?

I know Labour has a stranglehold majority in the Commons, but with them 20 months into office and repeatedly exposed as vulnerable sleaze-wise, you would think the Tories would have managed to stage a recovery, especially having grim experience of how damaging this can be politically. The trouble is that they made the mistake of picking a lad, in the form of the bumptious William Hague, to do a man's job and allowed their battle-hardened bruisers like Kenneth Clarke and Michael Heseltine to become muted voices - because of their pro-European tendencies.

But whether or not these two are Brussels groupies, they would have made hay out of Labour's shortcomings.

As it is, Little Willie's failure to score cannot go on for ever. More polls like this and he'll have to go.

I hold no brief for the sad Tories, but Labour being allowed to do as it likes for lack of an effective opposition is not at all healthy.

It's time for the Conservatives to find a new leader. After all, if you can't score when your opponent is filling the net with own goals, it's time for a substitution

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