The Labour Party could be heading for its worst General Election defeat in Birmingham in decades.

Not my claim, but that of a Labour stalwart who says he can't remember when the party has been so unpopular on the doorsteps.

The well-known Birmingham figure, who naturally does not wish to be identified, says canvassing returns during the past couple of weeks have been disastrous.

And with the party struggling in most national opinion polls to climb above 30 per cent, Labour organisers must be eyeing nervously the likes of Hall Green, Ladywood and Hodge Hill, where the Liberal Democrats are making a big push.

Nick Clegg is riding high at the moment but that may change on May 7.

Recent polls suggest the share of the vote may be something like this: Conservatives 34 per cent; Liberal Democrats 29 per cent, and Labour 27 per cent.

Those figures come from UK Polling Report, which calculates that, based on a uniform national swing, the Tories could win the most seats but be left 61 short of a majority.

It's usually taken for granted that any substantial reform to the voting system would require a referendum.

If the general election does lead to a government which backs significant change - whether that is a Labour or Liberal Democrat government or some sort of Labour/Lib Dem partnership - we could all find ourselves going back to the ballot boxes in a year or two.

Labour Cabinet Minister Liam Byrne has called for Labour and the Liberal Democrats to work together after the next election to reform Britain's constitution.

It sounded very much like he was backing some sort of partnership between the two parties in Government (it's not clear whether that would mean a formal coalition or not). [Edit - I should point out that he did also clearly call for a Labour victory rather than a hung Parliament].

He made the comments during the West Midlands debate broadcast by the BBC, as he answered the question "is this election a three horse race?"

At least Gordon Brown got one thing right when complaining about his disastrous election confrontation with Rochdale pensioner Gillian Duffy.
"That was a disaster", the prime minister told startled aides.
You're not wrong there, Gordon.
It remains to be seen whether Brown's comment that Mrs Duffy was a "bigoted woman" after disagreeing with her views about immigration and other issues turns out to be the final fatal slip that ends both his own career and condemns Labour to years in the political wilderness.
Party spin doctors did all they could to limit the damage, and the sight of once proud Gordon Brown scurrying round to Mrs Duffy's house in his chauffer-driven Jaguar to apologise in person will be one of the enduring memories of any General Election campaign.

When was the last time Britain had a hung Parliament? Nope, it wasn't in the 1970s, when "Sunny" Jim Callaghan, the Labour Prime Minister, was forced to agree a pact with the Liberals.

It was actually under John Major in 1996, when by-election losses robbed the Conservative government of the tiny majority they had win in the 1992 election.

Mr Major continued to govern a minority administration, although in practice he could still command a Commons majority with support from the Ulster Unionists.

Labour believes David Cameron has scored an own goal by warning that public expenditure dominates the economy in parts of the UK.

In an interview with Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight last week, the Conservative leader said: "In Northern Ireland it is quite clear - and almost every party accepts this -that the size of the state has got too big.

"We need a bigger private sector. There are other parts of the country, including in the north-east. The aim has got to be to get the private sector, to get the commercial sector going."

How confident are the Tories in winning an overall majority in the House of Commons?

Put it this way - their theme for the day is the danger of a hung Parliament. In other words, they're not very confident at all.

And they have launched a spoof party election broadcast warning how awful life would be under the "hung Parliament party", which seems at odds with their claim to be running a positive campaign.

But Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg hasn't done himself any favours either.

The mood in this week's Spectator, the weekly magazine which supports the Conservatives, is predictably gloomy.

The magazine contains some articles criticising Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats, although it does stick largely to policy issues and what it says are the dangers of a hung Parliament, in contrast to the more outlandish claims in some of the newspapers.

But more interesting is the criticism of David Cameron and the Conservative campaign strategy set out by well-informed political editor James Forsyth.

The final word, I hope, on Liberal Democrat policy about giving prisoners the vote, following our coverage of leaflets issued by Labour candidate Roger Godsiff.

Lib Dem candidate John Hemming has written to make it clear that the party does not support giving serious criminals (rapists and murderers) the vote. Mr Hemming writes: "our policy was changed after the 2005 election.  He [Godsiff] is referring in his leaflet to a policy paper from 2002.

David Cameron has just been speaking in Torquay, where he told assembled voters that they should have the right to boot out an unpopular Government - as Britain did to the Tories in 1997.

What nobody wanted, he said, was a system in which there was a permanently hung Parliament and politicians did deals among themselves to decide who should become Prime Minister.

In other words, we should stick with the existing first past the post system and reject proportional representation.

A bad day for David Cameron?

The Conservative leader was in Birmingham on Tuesday for a low-key visit to the Jericho foundation, a Balsall Heath charity which helps people in difficult circumstances find work.

So low key, in fact, that the local media weren't told about it until after he'd been and gone.

It's not like the Tories to hide their light under a bushel, so what went wrong? Well, perhaps the problem is that the Jericho Foundation receives funding from the Future Jobs Fund, which subsidises jobs for people aged 18-24 doing community work.

Nick Clegg says he believes in being straight with the public, but he's still using a sleight-of-hand trick to avoid one of the biggest questions facing him.

The Liberal Democrat leader was asked again today who he would support in the event of a hung Parliament (assuming, that is, the Lib Dems are still the third largest party in the Commons and haven't catapulted into second or first place).

His stock answer is that he doesn't want to be "kingmaker" and will accept the will of the people. Whoever comes first in the general election - even if they don't win a majority - should have the first opportunity to form a Government, he says.

A full copy of the controversial leaflet issued by Labour in Hall Green is available on the excellent website www.thestraightchoice.org, which reprints literature issued by the political parties.

A leaflet stuffed through the letter-box, written and designed locally, might be the most contact many voters have with their local candidates.

But few of us get to see party leaflets except those distributed in our own constituency. That makes it hard to find out what parties are actually saying to the public, but it's a gap www.thestraightchoice.org helps to fill.

Conservatives have postponed their planned election broadcast tonight, which would have focused on Labour, in place of a swiftly-produced film indirectly urging voters not to support the Lib Dems.

David Cameron attempts to offer a positive message about the changes the Tories hope to make - and ends by warning viewers: "The only way we're going to get that change is through a clear, decisive result at this election.

"Any other result would lead to more indecision and more of the old politics. We might even be stuck with what we've got now.

There's been a lot of interest today in an opinion poll which appeared to show the Liberal Democrats doing extremely well.

Here is what the poll actually found, as explained in a statement by ComRes, the polling group behind it:

The final analysis of the ComRes instant poll for last night's ITV News at Ten among those watching the First Election Debate, extrapolated across the GB adult population as a whole, puts the Conservatives on 35%, Labour on 28% and Liberal Democrats on 24%.

The Green Party manifesto, published today, makes interesting reading.

Like the other parties, the Greens' main focus appears to be on the economy, creating jobs and sorting out the banks, even if the solutions they suggest are different.

Greens are calling for the national minimum wage to increase to £8.10 an hour, and want pensions increased to £170 a week for someone living alone and £300 a week for couples.

The Tories have come in for some stick for failing to make it clear whether they would scrap regional development agencies such as Advantage West Midlands or not.

But what about the Liberal Democrats? From their manifesto:

"Reform Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) to focus solely on economic development, removing duplication with other parts of government and allowing substantial budget reductions.

"We will give responsibility for economic development to local authorities.

"Where existing RDAs have strong local support, they may continue with refocused economic development objectives.

"Where they do not, they will be scrapped and their functions taken over by local authorities."

We've had the three manifesto launches, and plenty of speeches from the party leaders.

But tomorrow, Thursday, sees the launch of an experiment in British politics, when Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg line up for the first of three televised election debates.

The party leaders will have a chance to explain their policies, prove their leadership credentials and show the nation what type of people they really are. I think these debates could have a big impact on the final election result, given how close the polls are.

MPs stand to lose more than their seats on election day.

House of Commons bicycle racks - reserved for the use of MPs only - are still full of bikes left behind by honourable members.

Why does David Cameron want to have fewer MPs?

One of the pledges in today's Conservative manifesto is to cut the number of MPs by ten percent, so that there are around 65 fewer of them in the House of Commons.

The avowed reason for this is to cut the cost of politics.

I'm not too sure about Labour's election animation, proudly unveiled at the party's manifesto launch in the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham today.

As one of the comments on YouTube sarcastically notes, it looks a little as if it was designed for children rather than the people who will be deciding who governs Britain.

It will be interesting to see how successful the party is with its plea, in a speech by blogger and Labour activist Ellie Gellard (BevaniteEllie on Twitter) before Mr Brown spoke, for party members to spread it across the interweb using every means possible.

What, if anything, should be done about people downloading entire DVDs, CDs or copies of movies recorded on a camcorder in the cinema?

It seems to me that this is the question posed by the Digital Economy Act, and the objections it has provoked.

Criticism of the Act usually focuses on the powers it grants the Secretary of State to oblige internet service providers to cap the bandwidth or temporarily cut off "the most serious infringers" of copyright laws.

Tories have been giving more details of their plans to cut the deficit, including cracking down on benefit cheats and reducing salaries for senior public sector managers.

David Cameron said that no senior manager in the public sector would be allowed to earn more than 20 times more than the lowest-paid person in their organisation.

It sounds pretty tough, but I don't think it would affect many people in practice.

David Cameron claimed today that National Citizen Service - his civilian and non-compulsory version of national service for 16-year-olds - will "help a generation of young people to appreciate what they can achieve" and help create what he calls a "the Big Society" (the capital letters are in a transcript of his speech prepared by Tory PR people, so I thought I'd leave them in).

Young people will be encouraged to take part for two months in the summer holidays after completing their GCSEs, and the groups will be "carefully constructed" to ensure a mix of people from different backgrounds.

It was a glitzy launch thanks to the presence of Michael Caine, who's a fan of the National Citizen Service idea. But what will youngsters actually be doing?

While Parliament winds down in preparation for dissolution for Monday, a few measures are still being debated and decisions made in what is known as the "wash up".

This is a period when the Government tries to get uncontroversial measures approved. But because there is no time for the usual full debate, it is easy for the opposition to block proposals they disapprove of.

Tories are taking the credit for blocking (or perhaps just delaying, if Labour wins the election) proposals for a 50p monthly phone tax to pay for new broadband networks, and a 10 per cent rise in cider duty.

David Cameron's visit to Birmingham today won't be the last we see of him. A Tory colleague tells me he'll be back often during the campaign.

It's a sign of the importance the Tories attach to winning Edgbaston from Labour as well potentially as other Birmingham seats such as Northfield.

Then there's Stourbridge in the Black Country, Solihull. Redditch, Stafford and Wolverhampton South West, all key marginals in the West Midlands.

But they might have a hard time dislodging sitting Edgbaston MP Gisela Stuart if their campaign focuses on getting rid of Gordon Brown - which seems to be the plan.

I've just sent the following to my editors on the Post and Mail via e-mail. Please do let me know what questions you think we should be asking.

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We have been invited to submit some Qs to David Cameron. I don't have formal agreements with Labour and the Lib Dems to do the same yet, but we should be able to get answers from Brown and Clegg too.