SO WHO are the most convincing liars? And will they triumph come polling day? If that seems a bit rude it's only to reflect the turn this election has taken. Charges of lying fill the air as the going gets distinctly personal.
After all the pious promise of positive campaigning, the campaign finally got good and nasty; Mr Blair turned "spontaneous and tore into Mr Major, painting a nightmare scenario of a fifth Tory term. Mr Major and his ministers replied with the heaviest personal fire on the Labour leader to date.
"Things," as the Labour anthem promises, "can only get better." And as the election descended into personal abuse both sides looked to be enjoying it. Only Paddy Ashdown stood above the fray, droning on about "the issues" of all things, parading his virtue as he continued to insist taxes will have to go up to pay for the improvements in health and education which the electors tell the pollsters they want to see.
Mr Blair and Dr Brian Mawhinney are both committed Christians. But charity never threatens when they catch sight of an opponent's jugular. And each of them tried to fill the electorate with fear of the Almighty as they sought decisive advantage in the final days before polling.
The Labour leader played the fear card when he offered voters a stark choice: "You can either have the two-tier Britain under the Conservatives, two-tier schools, two-tier health service, two-tier pensions, a two-tier society, or we can rebuild this country as One Nation." But he really drew the Tory fire with his allegation that a re-elected Conservative government would abolish the state pension and impose VAT on food.
Mr Major rejected Labour's "scurrilous" claims about the effect of Tory plans for a revolution in personal pensions: "In plain terms, they are liars." The Health Secretary, Mr Stephen Dorrell, said: "The tougher the questioning, the more he panics. The more he panics, the more he lies." And Dr Mawhinney suggested he found it hard "not to hold in contempt someone who deliberately sets out to smear, and to scare the elderly people of this country."
The Tory plan over a 40-year period is to give people entering the job market a rebate on their national insurance contributions with which to build up a personal pension fund. Mr Major calculates the pension would be worth £175 a week at today's prices. But the government has promised to guarantee the basic state pension if pension funds do not provide adequate income.
Labour has raised a legitimate line of questioning about the perceived funding shortfall in the Tory plan. But Mr Blair stood by his core contention: "The party of the poll tax and VAT on fuel is not the party to be trusted on Britain's pensions." And as Mr Major vowed he would walk out of Downing Street rather than scrap the state pension, Labour continued the attack. Gordon Brown said it was a known fact that "the Conservative plan is to abolish the state pension, replacing it with privately purchased provision".
The Tories, meanwhile, had returned to tried and tested territory, raising the tax fear as they tore into Mr Brown's plans for a windfall tax on the privatised utilities. Mr Major claimed it would increase the price of a phone call, and the cost of heating a room with a gas or electric stove, hitting pensioners while slashing the value of shares held by millions of savers. Chancellor Clarke then weighed in with a menu of alternative tax increases, from which he said Mr Brown would have to choose to plug an alleged £12 billion "black hole" in his spending plans.
Mr Brown has said he will live with Mr Clarke's plans for the first two years. But a powerful report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests Mr Clarke's plans - based on the assumption that public spending will grow by just 0.6 per cent in each year to 2000 border on the fantastic. And the British Chambers of Commerce have said the next government should raise taxes rather than interest rates to prevent the economy over-heating and the "boom" turning once more to "bust".
If that feeds public scepticism about Tory and Labour tax and spending plans, it might well extend into the generality of policy.
The Tory pensions revolution always seemed a risky adventure, better suited to the first year of a new parliament than the opening weeks of an election campaign. But Labour knows it is an issue with which it will have to grapple. Their promise to reform the Welfare State can hardly be painless. Likewise, without additional resources, many believe a Labour government would be forced to make hard-headed decisions about hospital closures. Mr Blair's insistence that all the problems of state education don't come down to a question of funding is hardly convincing. The IFS report suggests Mr Ashdown underestimates the extent to which the tax burden will have to rise.
And on the great European debate, what are voters to make of either party? Mr Blair naturally mocks Mr Major as he struggles to preside over "two Conservative parties". The loyalist protestations of Messrs Redwood, Portillo, Howard and Dorrell do nothing to dispel the suspicion that they are already fighting the next leadership battle. But what of Mr Blair? He once pledged never to allow Britain to be isolated in Europe. But he celebrated St George's Day with an article in the Sun, reassuring readers of his own Euro-scepticism with this nifty line: "Some will argue there is another dragon to be slain: Europe." That prompted one commentator to pose the question: "Europe or the tabloid, which will the Labour leader betray?"
Or might the voters, at the end, betray Mr Blair? The overwhelming evidence of the polls is that they will not, and that the election is already over. But if the punters are cynical about the politicians, the politicians are fairly cynical in their appreciation of them. That ICM poll, suggesting Labour's lead slashed to five points, took everybody by surprise except ICM. The company also conducts the Tory party's private polling, and has apparently not found a Labour lead higher than 10 points in the last nine days. And Mr Major must be praying that it is the prospective voters who've told the biggest whoppers of them all!