I got you Mel Now over to the last cabinet minister

Regrettably many of us would have been awake a long time yesterday before the latest broadcast round by the Last Cabinet Minister, Mel Stride.

-  Marina Hyde's , campaign trail

Even so, a Mel Stride appearance in this election has a flavour of those mornings in Groundhog Day when Bill Murray's clock radio lurches into life halfway through I Got You Babe. The dormant voter need only hear the genial work and pensions secretary say: "Let's not get too carried away here" to sit bolt upright as grim reality dawns once more.

As the long days pass, these listeners have worked through the emotions: disbelief, anger, resignation, smash radio, restart cycle. Just hearing that Stride is "up next” produces a Pavlovian response: a million-yard stare and the realisation that it is the general election again - it is somehow still the general election - and, indeed, may always be the general election.

And yet, to adapt the words that once graced Mario Balotelli's base layer: "WHY ALWAYS MEL?" Even interviewers playing the Sonny to Mel's Cher have begun to ask where the rest of the cabinet are.

It's hard to say. Ladbrokes? I cannot remember an election where the cabinet has been so invisible in the national campaign. They may as well be in witness protection.