Here we go again. I'm writing my column to meet my Tuesday deadline, the General Election date has just been confirmed, the Prime Minister is taking the High Speed Train to launch the campaign in Kent and I'm preparing for the toughest fight since I first contested the Dover & Deal seat in 1992.

David Shaw was the Conservative MP then, he beat me by just 833 votes but the swing to Labour convinced me that we would be ready to take the seat in 1997 - and so it proved.

The Liberals came third in 1992 as they have in every election in this seat since I first moved to Dover with my family over thirty years ago. They've never made much progress in Kent but on a personal level I've always got on well with the Liberal Candidates. Geoffrey Nice and then Anthony Hook fought firm but fair campaigns and I get on well with John Brigden who is currently batting for the Liberals. They conducted themselves honestly in most respects but at election time they couldn't resist printing in their leaflets: "Only the Lib Dems can beat Labour in this constituency" - which was patently untrue then, as it is now.

I can understand why traditional Liberal voters don't like to be told that their votes are wasted but in seats like ours - which are two horse races - their votes could well let the Tories back in through the back door.

I hope the Conservatives fight fair this time but going by their behaviour in last year's KCC and Deal Town Council elections the prospects of a clean fight are pretty slim. They put out some scurrilous leaflets which were full of smear and innuendo and they published a collage of cuttings about "political sleaze" and "MP's on the make" etc. designed to blacken the reputations of local Labour politicians. What they didn't tell you was that the worst of the headlines were taken from the national press and they related to other constituencies and members of other political parties.

On Monday, Parliament will be dissolved and I will cease to be your MP and become Labour's Parliamentary candidate, on the same basis as my opponents. I'll be reminding people that of the three main contestants - I'm the only local candidate and I have the advantage of being able to draw on a record covering 20 years of public service as a Dover District Councillor, a Kent County Councillor and, for the last thirteen years, the MP for Dover & Deal

I will be campaigning hard and telling people that Gordon Brown is bringing us out of the deepest global recession of our times; unemployment is falling month on month, the market is rising and the economy is growing again. And I'll be warning people that David Cameron's plan to make immediate deep cuts in frontline services risks throttling off the recovery and plunging us into a double-dip recession.

It's a really big choice this time. It's a big decision - and the decision is yours.

© Hawkinge Gazette and Channel Coast News 2010