ePolitix.com - Week on the web

Political leaders hope to avoid going into recess on the back foot, because with no fresh stories to keep the media busy, the old ones can stay in circulation like stale air on the London Underground.

But unfortunately for Gordon Brown, much of this week was dominated by suggestions of a Labour rebellion over his year-old plan to end the 10p income tax rate, although - as Revolts points out - most MPs have already had a chance to object.

Stumbling and Mumbling puts this story of the political narrative more eloquently when he posts: "As the saying goes, if you give a man a reputation as an early riser he can sleep till noon. Now, though, Brown's reputation is much lower. So even his unchanged policies are judged more harshly."

Sam Coates at Red Box announced the arrival of Black Tuesday this week, so bleak did he think things were looking for Brown - from sliding poll results to Jack Straw threatening to punch Ed Balls.

For a really rather aggressive view of Balls, a "nerdy little git", read The Huntsman - billed as "a rural antidote to the metropolitan bubble".

Guido ratchets up the violent mood - politics really can be a nasty business - with a link to the inevitable web-based video game.

The drip of criticism for Brown continued when it was confirmed he would not be attending the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

The vitriolic Mr Eugenidies has a post on the Velcro PM, saying: "To quote a famous speech by Denis Healey, some of his colleagues must be a bit tired by now of his hobbling around with a bleeding hole in his foot and a smoking gun in his hand, telling them that he did not know it was loaded. This is surely a dead man walking."

Comment Central's Danny Finkelstein is more forgiving, describing it as a "mild error" which only becomes huge when "everyone has already concluded that you are a bunch of losers".

And Sky's Glen Oglaza is baffled as to why the rest of the Westminster press pack thought it was a boycott or a U-turn.

Web-watchers cannot have failed to notice the launch this week of PoliticsHome, widely hailed as a potentially major new service along the lines of a political Bloomberg.

Editor-in-chief Andrew Rawnsley, who was plugging the new site in his Observer column last Sunday, analyses the findings of its panel of opinion formers - which showed that 70 per cent thought Brown had handled the politics of the Olympics badly.

The London mayoral race is, as usual, impossible to ignore. The use of online video has become bigger in this election than any before, from I think I fancy Boris Johnson - opinion is still divided over whether that attack advert hits home or boosts the member for Henley - to Ken's "my proudest moment was grinding the New Labour machine into the dust".

Livingstone claimed it was the first time any party had put a rival's party election broadcast on its own site, a move - as he explains in this response - inspired by the lack of optimism in Johnson's video.

Play Political has each man's PEB, aired to London viewers this week, along with every other clip you could hope for.

The Guardian's Andrew Sparrow blogs about that difference in tone here, while the who should you vote for quiz was doing the rounds.

If you think the campaign has been fairly dirty so far, prepare to stow away your squeamishness at the thought of ConservativeHome's "nasty Ken video".

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