EVERY four or five years, we are invited to take part in a General Election. At the last one we clearly forgot to read the small-print. Had we looked more carefully we would have seen a clause written in invisible ink in which Tony Blair pledged to impersonate the Tories to the best of his abilities.

Then there was the following footnote: If Labour wins again, would you like the Opposition to be formed by the Conservative Party or a right-wing national newspaper with a penchant for peddling poison and nastiness?

Sadly, no one noticed this rider - so we are now living in strangely over-heated times. The Mail newspaper group has appointed itself as the Shadow Government. This has happened because the actual Opposition is pusillanimous, having all the fighting prowess of a wet slipper.

All this is worth remembering when looking at what, with dreary predictability, has been called Cheriegate. The accusation against the Prime Minister's wife is that she apparently attempted to conceal her connections with a fraudster, who helped her to buy two flats in Bristol, where her son is going to attend university.

Many other details, mostly too tedious to mention, have been dragged out. And if this scenario brings to mind dogs fighting over bloody shreds of meat, that's the way it is.

I won't list all the twists and turns, because by the time this column appears the Mail and others of a frothy-lipped ilk will probably be alleging that Cherie Blair is keeping 50 illegal immigrants in the back garden of 10 Downing Street, had that Saddam Hussein round for a cup of tea, and is really a transsexual caveman anyway.

There is no question that a fraudster helping the Blairs buy two flats was a good enough story. The problem lies in the fevered witch hunt that followed.

The Mail, which generated all this fuss, has taken to the moral high ground and is clearly enjoying the view. Yet because the newspaper group has admitted paying the fraudster in question, it is hardly in a position to talk.

True, the Blairs do not emerge well from this farrago. Spending half a million on two student flats was hardly politic when Mr Blair was considering topping up student fees and making life even more difficulty for ordinary parents.

On coming to power, Tony Blair went out of his way to court the likes of the Mail, glancing fearfully over his shoulder when announcing every policy, just in case the keepers of Middle England's shrivelled conscience would raise a howl. Late in the day he has discovered that if you sit down to dine with wolves, you may get your toes chewed off.

Yet the intensity of the coverage, often couched in terms of spitting hatred, has been out of all proportion. Paradoxically, the more of a bashing Cherie receives, the more sympathy she could earn from a public grown weary of sopping up the vitriol - especially after her emotional confessional on Tuesday night.

There needs now to be an awareness that such relentless pressure on leaders and their families has a human cost and could harm politics.

No one earns much credit from this second-rate scandalette. Not the Blairs, tripping over their financial and personal bumbling, and cornered by Cherie's naivet. Not the nastier sort of newspaper, bent double in pursuit of a tilted agenda. And certainly not the man who is supposed to be leading the Opposition.

Iain Duncan Smith stood mutely by as Number 10 and certain newspapers scrapped. Then, after the journalists had done the dirty work, he came mumbling on to the television calling for an inquiry. Hardly the actions of a man in control of his destiny, his party or even which foot to put in front of which.

Updated: 10:56 Thursday, December 12, 2002