Taking time out from listening to his £467 stereo paid for on expenses, Labour’s Corby campaign manager Ian Austin has been following orders word for word from his Brownite boot-boy flatmate Tom Watson. Back in August Guido revealed how Watson had ordered his Corby campaign team to brief that they expected to lose Louise Mensch’s old seat, despite being dead-cert favourites. Despite Lord Ashcroft’s comprehensive polling calling the result for Labour already, the Austin spin-machine is in overdrive:

“No one should be under any illusions: we lost this seat in 2010, and winning it back will be a really tough challenge…The truth is that we lost this bell-weather constituency in 2010. Winning it back will be a really tough fight for us and we are not taking anything for granted.”

Not only that, but Austin implies that Corby constituents outside the town itself will be harder to win round. Because they’re rich:

“Corby is the main town but half the voters live in places like Rockingham, Oundle, Irthlingborough and Raunds: picture-postcard market towns and rural villages dotted across East Northamptonshire. Average incomes in these areas are higher than Mid-Sussex and on a par with places like East Hampshire, Woking and West Berkshire.”

Not very One Nation of you, Ian…