UK ELECTION: "You can tell who the media think is winning," whispered my colleague. "Look how busy it is." And no, we were not in the Conservatives' campaign headquarters.
Michael Howard had obligingly called his press conference for the (comparatively) more civilised hour of nine o'clock yesterday morning. But Tony Blair and his colleagues were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on the dot of 8.30. And, as my colleague again observed at close to 9.20am - long after Howard had been due to kick off - we were still there listening to the prime minister and his Home Office colleagues proclaiming their latest crackdown on yobs, and Chancellor Gordon Brown digging the Conservative Party's economic "black hole" deeper and deeper.
It might be that this plainly confident prime minister simply no longer factors the others into his grid plan for the announcement (and reannouncement) of Labour's proposals. But if this was a spoiling tactic it was well executed - because the Conservatives were launching the third tranche of what has proven to be a quite skilful disposition of the modest £4 billion they are promising in tax cuts for their first budget.
This is of course small change in the context of total public spending of £520 billion. However, Mr Howard and shadow chancellor Oliver Letwin have already surprised with a conspicuous failure to target tax cuts "for the rich".
If the country was seriously listening, they might feel to have trumped Mr Brown with their plan to halve the council tax bills for pensioner households in which the occupants are all over 65. And they have won favourable comment even from Labour-supporting newspapers for their decision to tackle Britain's "pensions timebomb" by targeting a tax break at the 10 million British workers who do not currently save (in many cases because they can't afford to) for their retirement.
Yesterday it was the turn of homebuyers, with the promise that a Conservative government would raise the stamp duty threshold to £250,000, so taking the average homebuyer out of stamp duty altogether.
"Life is a struggle for too many families in Britain today. Last year average incomes fell for the first time in a decade - thanks to Mr Blair's punishing stealth cuts," Mr Howard said. "But it's not enough to criticise. It's time to offer practical help."
On the other hand, maybe it wasn't the best day to maximise publicity for their plan to help young people to get on to the property ladder, since the publication of the police crime figures inevitably sparked a wholly predictable row over whether violent crime has gone up or down - which, equally inevitably, generated more heat than light.
Mr Blair - looking relaxed in his shirt sleeves, mug of tea at hand, and tan (from last weekend, working in the garden) - doesn't accept that violent crime has risen at all. This is because Labour prefers the findings of the alternative British Crime Survey, which questions thousands of people about their experience of crime, and which shows that violent crime as well as crime overall has fallen.
Basking in the reflected glory of Labour's endorsement by the Sun newspaper and celebrity chef Delia Smith, Mr Blair wasn't about to concede it was with good reason that few people in Britain believe any of these statistics.
Nor did he betray the faintest embarrassment when he allowed that "the fact that violent crime may have fallen" did not deflect from the fact "that fear of crime remains deeply felt in many of our communities". Nor was Mr Blair embarrassed by that endorsement by a foreign media mogul. With everything still to play for (Mr Blair can't have Labour supporters believe the polls) he was happy to take all the support he could get. And there was more a hint of hilarity than embarrassment as the chancellor upbraided Conservative candidates for allegedly adding to personal manifestos local spending commitments additional to those made by the leadership.
"No election programme of Mrs Thatcher would have contained such irresponsible promises," he mocked, reminding us of New Labour's claim now to be the party of fiscal rectitude. They have to be really confident to be that cheeky.