The William Hague bus is an altogether more subdued experience than life with new Labour. It's a lot of travel for not very much exposure of the Tory leader - under an hour by my calculation in Blackpool and Llandudno - and with no clear sense that he is having any impact on the marginals he visits. The bus is an old-fashioned charabanc, without tables or electric points. True, the food is better, and more copious, than on Tony Blair's battle bus, and the Tories do not frown on alcohol. A small bottle of inferior white or perfectly drinkable Grenache/Merlot is served with the packed lunch.

But despite the forced optimism of the leader, there remains a sense that the Tories are going through the motions. Hague repeats the same speech at every stop, together with his tired joke: "When do you know Tony Blair is telling an untruth? When his lips move." The hacks - and there are fewer than on the Blair bus - groan in unison. Interest in the Tory Battle Bus Bingo, which bets on Hague's cliche rate, is listless.

Happily, the security is similarly relaxed. Blair is surrounded by the proverbial ring of steel wherever he goes. The Tory leader moves comfortably without too many minders, and presumably the police have decided he isn't going to be prime minister anyway.

Much has been made of Ffion Hague's Trappist vow of silence on the campaign trail. Too much, it seems. The Tory high command are not so worried about what she might say - she's a bright lass and a former senior civil servant - but the way she would say it. Ffion still has a strong Welsh accent and, mixed with William's nasal tyke twang, it could prove a lethal turn-off for voters. I dunno. They are so far behind in the polls, a bit of hywel might come in handy. By the way, their body language on the road is affectionate and, unlike Blair, they go home to London every night.

At the party's morning press conferences, pressure mounts to get in the first question. John Sergeant of ITN has taken to putting up his hand and pointing to himself while the chairman's introductory remarks are still in fulI flow. He shifts in his seat like a restless orangutan, determined to be ahead of Plug, aka his successor at the BBC, Andrew Marr. But since Ladies' Day, when the Westminster wimmin staged a daring putsch, lobby girlies are regularly hitting the button first.

I put this down to mischief-making by Millbank spin-doctors, but it is pointed out with some emphasis that Francis Maude's people are being hyperactive in their boss's cause. It is suggested that their enthusiasm is not entirely unconnected with a Tory leadership bid.

John Prescott's excursion into punch politics has prompted the police to step up their care-in-the-community role. Prezza now has a police escort wherever he goes, as a Sunday Times reporter found to his cost when trying to tail the DPM's battle bus. The cops told him to clear off; and none of this nonsense about "what law am I breaking?".

Meanwhile, preparations are discreetly going ahead for another election, for the two top jobs in the Transport and General Workers' Union. Senior figures are now talking of their expectation that the deputy general secretary, Margaret Prosser, once the darling of the hard left, will accept a peerage after the election. Could Bill Morris, the general secretary, follow her on to the red benches?

His term of office still has more than two years to run, but the election is likely next year, with the successor running in tandem for a year. Meanwhile, the T&G executive was surprised to hear that Morris had been called in by John Monks, the TUC general secretary, for a chat on his emoluments. Evidently the leader of the second biggest union was "letting the side down" on the salary front. His salary was duly upped from £63,565 to around £73,000, the "package" (including car, pension, etc) rising from £80,805 to £95K.

Paul Routledge is chief political commentator for the Mirror

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