LAST Tuesday and they were off – Tony Blair on safari, and Gordon Brown to see the Queen to dissolve Parliament.

That means thousands of candidates hit the campaign trail in order to elect a new Government. This campaign will be different from others, with the Leaders’ debates, the scandal of MPs expenses firmly in the minds’ of the electorate and the knowledge that change really is in the air.

Internet campaigning may be used more in this election than ever before but many people still want to display a poster to show their support.

The answer phone in our campaign office has been filled by people wanting posters and pledging their support for our campaign so I met with some this afternoon to take them a poster. At one point I even climbed a ladder to fix a poster on a tree in Mill Hill for a local resident.

If you want a poster, please give our campaign office a call on 020 8445 0702.

The first evening of the campaign was very busy as we met voters at Tube stations in Hendon. Mill Hill, Colindale and the train station at West Hendon Broadway.

There appears to be relief that Gordon Brown has finally called this election and we were inundated with people saying they will give us their vote on 6th May.

One of the big differences between the Conservative activists and Labour is that our activists are local – one Labour activist was from Poland, one from Hackney, one from Finsbury Park, another from another part of London and just one was from Hendon.

It is good to see so many people that I know at the station – one lady said where do you know me from? She was a member of the choir at St Marys Church in Hendon, where Claire and I had our Banns read on Sunday.

One of my activists (who shall remain nameless) told commuters that they should take Conservative leaflets “ …because our candidate is more handsome than the Labour one”. “We agree with you there”, shouted back one of the Labour activists.

Afterwards we went and canvassed. As we walked through the underpass at Hendon Central there were dozens of Labour leaflets discarded on the ground.

That was surprising as many people had refused to take the Labour leaflet and those which did threw them away – still, the recycling rate in Hendon will go up.

Being on the campaign trail means eating out in lots of places and it is always a pleasure to eat in L’ arista at Hendon Central, where we do that night. As we went home, I saw that all the lights in the Labour office were turned off – and it was just 10 pm.

So much for working hard! Still, we had time to watch Newsnight at home and saw me talking to Michael Crick at last year’s Party Conference – there, we made it on to the national news on the first night of the campaign.