‘Johnson attacks Mayor on London policing’ said a headline this morning, instantly leading me to believe that Boris was so bored with the election, he had decided to add a little excitement by attacking himself. But it turned to be Postie Al having a go from his lofty moral vantage point as Home Secretary in charge of torturing folks. The election is enough of a confusing blur of childish banality as it is without politicians with the same name having senior roles in the law and order trade.

Fresh from a good kicking at the feet of Paxo last night, Nick Clegg this morning announced his 487th contradictory policy intention – to ensure loss-making banks would be prohibited from paying discretionary bonuses. I wonder if anyone now knows which Party is which on the subject of banks? The Tories say Labour failed to control them (true) and the Government says they’re all the Tories’ mates (also true) and Vince Cable thinks they’re all plonkers (also true). Fine – but do any of them have a policy that might change their ways or repair their balance sheets? I think not.

Able as ever to bring confusion where there had previously been uncertainty, the Prime Minister said that former Labour MPs David Chaytor, Elliot Morley, and Jim Devine, who are claiming legal aid to fight their Court battles over expenses, will have to pay the money back. True to type, Gordon failed to make clear which precise bit of the entirely troughed dosh he would be after. David Cameron of course has been far more precise on this: he thinks any Labour MP caught fiddling should be guillotined – but then, he was less sure about draconian punishment when the Torygraph’s expenses revelations first came out…which on reflection, was very wise of him.

As the trade deficit narrowed to a mere £6.2billion (Margaret Thatcher won her first term on the ‘disgrace’ of a public sector borrowing requirement of that size) an optimistic Gordon Brown offered Britain a “realistic but radical plan for Britain”, and said the future could be progressive or Conservative, but not both. He didn’t say whether it had to be either radical or realistic – or whether it could be progressively radical and conservatively realistic. But David Cameron decided to contradict this (I think) by being Conservatively radical: he played on the themes of people power, the big society and a culture of responsibility, proposing directly elected police chiefs, allowing constituents to fire MPs, and giving communities “right to buy” powers for ailing services. All of this washed over me, if only because I know none of it will happen.

On that theme, the Daily Politics front person Andrew Neil for once rendered Tessa Jowell speechless at midday by pointing out that New Labour hadn’t fulfilled a single one of its election commitments from 2005. Tess of the D’Urbanbooze made up for this by being insufferably noisy and bossy for the rest of the programme.

Finally, it was left to Culpability Brown to observe without a scintilla of condescension that the British are ‘far too sensible’ to vote for the BNP. To be fair, for once he’s probably right – but he was silent on the subject of UKIP. This could just be because the British people may well vote in frightening numbers for UKIP. And while it pains me to observe this, the only Party with anything remotely distinctive to say at all today was that Party.

In what was thought by many in the commentariat to be a an unprecedented move, UKIP said they would back seven euro-sceptic candidates from the Conservative and Labour parties at the general election. As an appeal to the latter middle-aged patriotic vote, this was by far the shrewdest move of the day – but it’s about as unprecedented as sunrise. In the 1890s, such an arrangement pertained between the newly minted Labour Party and the Liberals. It was also employed again by Davids Steel and Owen at the birth of the SDP in the 1980s: most hacks today were educated after 1970,and it shows.