With Labour’s lead dropped to just three points, expect a tight race, where political spin will get the better of truth as politicians try and get the voters interested and out to vote. Expect dirty tricks from both sides. The Tories have now accused Labour of running "Operation Blackwatch" a covert monitoring system in which Labour are alleged to be inflitrating meetings held byTory MPs and covertly recording them, – as happened with Howard Flight. You can expect similar tactics from the Tories, never ones for a clean fight.

This election will also see innovations in election spin imported from the US and even from Australia. The evolution of techniques for undermining democracy have been learned from the PR industry and the US system where the rol of money has loong been crucial in elections. In recent months US political and government interests have been shown to have played a shadowy role in attempting to manipulate elections and undermine democracy in Ukraine, Iraq, Lebanon and Krygyzstan. We will monitor the use of these techniques in the next four weeks.

To help expose "election spin" we are launching a special Election blog – where SpinWatch contributors will note cases of blatant spin and electioneering.

We have also launched special news category called "election spin" and we are asking all contributors to post articles that concern spin in this general election to the site. To do so simply click on Submit news (also available from the top menu in the Spinwatch homepage). We have already posted articles such as Mandelson’s recall, the playing down of the war in Iraq and Howard Flight’s removal on the site. Please help us expose political spin and post news items. We also encouraged Spinwatch users to send us details of examples of spin as they come across them. We will try to investigate and get the story out. Please either email information to us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or enter them via the comments section in this blog.