IT IS, EVERYONE AGREES, a very odd election. The voters are leaping around like frisky ferrets, one moment in Michael Howard’s sack, the next in Tony Blair’s. Pausing to administer a painful nip to the groin, they then fling themselves at Charles Kennedy, rooting around in his pockets before deciding that there is nothing there for them either so they might as well go home. Although Mr Blair’s sack was quite comfy . . .

If voters are behaving like greedy little animals, asking what did the politicians ever do for me, then the politicians have only themselves to blame. The blatant bribing of specific sectors of the electorate has been the least edifying spectacle of the campaign thus far. Labour is puzzled and distraught at the lack of gratitude from voters, particularly among working and lower-middle-class women who have most benefited from massive extra handouts over eight years.

How to reach these natural Labour supporters, who do not like the Conservatives and might vote Liberal Democrat but are more likely not to vote at all, is the huge challenge for Labour. Detailed polling conducted for the party among floating voters in marginal seats shows why. The Labour lead widens considerably the more that voters turn out — we are talking 15, even 20-point leads here.

While the Conservative Party has already won most of the voters it is going to attract, there is a vast constituency of disaffected Labour supporters still going begging. This means that published polls, which are weighted according to people’s likelihood to vote, tend to show the best-case scenario for the Conservatives, but the worst-case scenario for Labour. There are an awful lot more votes out there for Labour to win, very few for the Tories.

But how to win them? Go positive? Go negative? If Labour sticks to “positive” messages about its record and its plans for the future, it simply does not get the credit for its achievements. “The economy’s doing well,” said one woman in a focus group. “It’s not an issue in this campaign.” Other women list all the benefits they have received under Labour — then say they are not going to vote this time. They’re not afraid of a Tory government because they do not think there is any chance there will be one, and anyway the idea of “Tory cuts” is too vague: who or what will they cut, and where? Labour needs to tell them. If it wants them to turn out, it needs to shake them out of their complacency. One adviser to Mr Blair has even suggested frightening single mothers into voting with the threat that the Tories, who have signed up to the principle of co-parenting after separation, will take your children away from you.

I cannot imagine Mr Blair saying anything like that. The Prime Minister does not like negative campaigning. Hence his broadly upbeat statement outside No 10 yesterday about his mission, his values and his vision. Nobody who matters electorally will have listened. There were only two brief moments that might have grabbed the attention of the voters that Labour needs to gain. The first was when Mr Blair professed his desire for “a country where people who play by the rules get on and those that don’t, don’t”. The second was when he backed immigration controls but not quotas. And the trouble is that in the opinion of the voters whom Labour is pursuing, the second fails to achieve the first.

Race is the great, silent issue in this election. It is driving everything. Out there in the real world, away from Westminster, Notting Hill and the broadcasting studios, the electorate in the marginal seats over which the parties are now fighting is obsessed with immigration. These voters seethe over confused groups of immigrants, asylum-seekers and gypsy travellers who appear to them to get away with breaking all the rules and living off everybody else. They don’t pay taxes, they claim benefits, they use the NHS and they get “our” houses. And they seem to be beyond the law.

This concern crosses over into anger about low-level crime and antisocial behaviour. It poisons perceptions of the public services, seen to be wasting money on undeserving recipients. And, however well people do, they feel personally hard done by because look at all these other people getting everything for nothing.

I don’t know why this is. But I know that it is happening. MPs are tearing their hair out about it. Focus groups are blinded by it. Michael Howard plays on it. Ministers criticise the Government for having failed to tackle it. Yet Mr Blair seems unable or unwilling to address it. He has neither met the concerns of voters, nor explained to them strongly enough why he thinks them wrong.

And until he does, the voters will continue not to hear what he is saying. The next few weeks will see the Prime Minister traipse around marginal seats trying to persuade people that Labour is listening to them. And he won’t hear them and they won’t hear him because they are speaking different languages. He can take all his clothes off and scream naked about his record and all these voters will notice is the East European in the crowd. Immigration and asylum is the only issue among the dozen or so most important in determining how people vote in which the Tories have a lead over Labour. Read that again. The only issue. In every single other area, from the economy to health, education, pensions, taxes, and even Europe and Iraq, Labour is in the lead. Yet the parties are within a couple of points of one another in the polls.

Like it or not, this is the issue quietly dominating this election. Labour has failed to confront it in two terms in office, and an election campaign is no time to start. All Mr Blair can do is try to neutralise it by accusing Mr Howard or the Tories of opportunism or even racism. Sometimes you have to get negative, and issues do not come much more negative than the desire, reasonable or otherwise, to strip benefits and the very homes from others. If he can protect his nether regions until then, this will be Mr Blair’s big challenge in his third term.

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