Sandra cuts to the big issue

Today the general election campaign finally got serious. One could tell, because Sandra Howard started laying into Cherie Blair about her hair.

While other, less enlightened figures concerned themselves with such thorny questions as immigration policy and pensions tax relief, the Tory leader's wife got down to what she knows is the real issue: where Cherie has her hair done - and how much she spends on it.

The answers, according to Mrs Howard, are respectively: at home, and rather a lot. Mrs Howard - who is, of course, a former model, and therefore presumably knows a fancy hairdo when she sees one - claimed her rival at No 10 is spending a fortune on dawn home visits from "the priciest hairdresser in town".

Her disclosure comes in a unique election diary on the Tory party website - the first by a party leader's spouse. Writing about life on the campaign trail, she describes how a Tory aide warned her that her own hair looked "a mess on television".

She went on: "I have heard on the grapevine that a certain other leader's wife has booked arguably the best and certainly the priciest hairdresser in town for the entire campaigning month ahead.

"I reckon that gives me some good leverage in getting across that my hair deserves a look-in, too..." The political analysts have yet to work out what effect this will have on the election, but optimists at Conservative Central Office believe it could kickstart the party's flagging campaign.

It has, after all, all the right elements: exploitation of the workers, Labour hypocrisy, unthinking extravagance by the power-crazed Blairs (and the unspoken suggestion that Cherie needs serious hair care before she can face the public, while Sandra would still look lovely in curlers).

Mrs Howard, of course, says nothing so catty or blatantly political. Her online diary goes on: "My own hairdresser doesn't go a bundle on the idea of home visits at dawn and tells me I'd faint away at his out-of-hours charges. Susie [a Tory aide] offers her services. She does an instant, on-the-spot blow-dry; it's marvellous, she's a genius and we make plans for regular early morning hair-salvation sessions."

For the record, Mrs Blair's longstanding hairdresser is André "uard, a stylist at top Mayfair salon Michaeljohn who charges around £70 even for a normal cut. He has accompanied Mrs Blair on foreign trips, including one to New York which was reported to have cost the Blairs about £2,000.

But for the sake of political balance we probably need to hear from Mrs Blair on this one. Over to you, Cherie - and everyone else, stand back.