TONY BLAIR says the election is about trust. Paddy Ashdown has decided to buy into that. And the instinct (pure hunch, totally unscientific) is that Mr Ashdown has been doing almost as much as the Tories to take the shine off the leader of New Labour.
Certainly the contest between Labour and the Liberal Democrats has thrown this campaign into stark, and welcome, relief.
A great yawn attends the battle between the main contenders - rival parties of business, pledging to foster enterprise and entrepreneurialism in a low inflation, low tax, market economy.
The Conservatives have for sworn the obvious campaign which casts Mr Blair as a pale imitation of themselves. Instead they frantically - work their "New Labour, New Danger" theme.
But Mr Blair shows no shame in making any policy adjustments necessary to defuse the fear factor.
The music at Millbank Tower promises "Things can only get better." But the underlying message is that voters can opt for change with the assurance that they will barely notice the difference.
True, Mr Blair makes all manner of vows and covenants. His party promises to cut classroom sizes, improve education standards, extend nursery provision, provide more doctors and nurses, crack down on youth crime, get young people off welfare into work, and generally preside over a skills revolution. But not at the cost of increasing taxes or borrowing.
For the first two years, a Labour government is committed to living within the means bequeathed it by the Chancellor, Mr Kenneth Clarke.
Since nobody seems to believe the Chancellor, the Labour claims - given the instinct and expectation of many of its core supporters - must strike people as still less credible. Paddy Ashdown dismisses the promise of Tory and Labour manifestos as mere conjuring tricks.
His contemptuous dismissals of the Conservatives could almost write themselves. But he has taken an increasingly sharp tone with Labour - deriding the party's neglect of the forgotten poor, mocking its twists and turns over Europe, devolution, privatisation and, most especially, education.
In his first salvo Mr Ashdown accused Labour of producing "the most complacent manifesto from any non conservative party in recent times."
It was strong on criticism of the Tories, he said, but short on Labour solutions: "The banners may get bigger, the soundbites slicker, but Labour get no nearer to offering the solutions this country desperately needs."
And Mr Ashdown claimed Mr Blair would have to break one of two manifesto commitments: "It makes two impossible promises. The one is to improve education and health, the other is not to put any more money into it."
And he returned to the attack yesterday as Mr Blair, on the first day of his new "positive" campaign, returned to his Big Idea.
At the October party conference the Labour leader described his priorities as "Education, Education, Education".
But Mr Ashdown replied that words were cheap: "The reality is that to improve the educational `three Rs' you must have the Liberal Democrat `three Rs' - resources, resources, resources."
British spending on education, at 5.1 per cent of GDP, is below the average for OECD countries. Labour's manifesto claims the Tories have cut spending by £3 billion sterling. Mr Blair's vow is that by the end of a first term he will have increased education spending as a proportion of national wealth. But he has not said by how much.
Mr Ashdown, by contrast, flaunts his virtue by saying he would put 1p on the standard rate of tax to invest £2 billion in Britain's schools.
The Tories weighed in yesterday, claiming Labour would at most raise £60 million by scrapping the Assisted Places Scheme, which enables bright children from poor backgrounds to attend independent schools.
Conservative Central Office said this amounted to just a third of the cost of Labour's commitment to cut class sizes to under 30.
The Tories mocked Labour's promise to add 350 specialist schools (which they originally opposed) to the existing 150. And they hit the other two Labour soft spots.
David Blunkett's "Read my lips. No selection by examination or by interview" now sits alongside the promise to leave the existing grammar schools alone. And there is the recurring embarrassment of the party's opposition to grant maintained schools (which have opted out of local education authority control) and the decision of some senior Labour figures, including Mr Blair, to send their own children to them.
"Hypocrisy, hypocrisy, hypocrisy" chided Education Secretary Ms Gillian Shepherd. But it's resources, resources, resources which might find a resonance with voters. Or so you might think.
If, as people tell the pollsters, education tops their list of concerns, Mr Ashdown's support might be expected to show a sharp rise. But it's all back to trust.
The Tories know they lag behind on virtually every concern save one - the economy. And they're praying the people who talk to the pollsters will prove as dishonest as they did in 1992.