Labour is taking nothing for granted in Edinburgh South, reports Kathy Sheridan
If "leaflet fatigue" can depress electorate turn-out, then Edinburgh South will have a problem.
For eight months, this mainly elegant, leafy constituency - home to high-flying lawyers, bankers, academics and the likes of JK Rowling, Ian Rankin and Robin Cook; the fifth most prosperous in the UK and the sixth most educated - has been love-bombed relentlessly by the three main parties.
The Tories and Lib Dems scent Labour blood. Nigel Griffiths's notional 5,000-strong majority for Labour seems safe on paper. But factor in Iraq and a Lib Dem rout in the 2003 Scottish Parliament elections, which saw off Angus MacKay, a Labour star, and it becomes one of those rare events in British politics - a genuine three-way battle.
The Liberal Democrats' office on Grange Road is thick with volunteers, in to pick up their leaflet bundles and hoping for a quick gossip. The woman in charge is perspiring under the pressure. Outside, a self-regarding young councillor has just side-swiped a taxi in his rush to park.
The candidate herself is out in the constituency with some party heavyweights, handing out leaflets (they say), and is not welcoming journalists right now.
It may well be that Marilyne MacLaren has been given something to chew on since news of the postal vote tally started to leak out this morning. Although it is illegal to speak of these things before the election count proper, the word around Edinburgh South is that the postal vote puts the Conservatives in front, followed by Labour, with the Lib Dems a poor third - a good 15 per cent behind the front-runner.
This of course is good news for Gavin Brown and the Tories - a party always said to be rather good at the "granny farming" required for motivating the postal vote - but a disaster for the Lib Dems, who are not only the perceived masters of the genre but have sunk extraordinary resources into Edinburgh South.
The Labour camp receives the news of its runner-up position with surprising chirpiness. "Oh it's definitely good news," says a delighted activist heading out with a bundle of posters, "it means we're still ahead of the Lib Dems, despite all their efforts."
Griffiths, a junior minister at the department of trade and industry and an MP here for 18 years, runs a tight ship.
The last-minute nerves are palpable.
Above the thump-thump of the printing press, six volunteers, including the candidate himself, are working flat out, folding final appeals to first-time voters and stuffing envelopes.
"I do it for fun," says a young man, "and because Nigel is a character." Griffiths, generally acknowledged as a hard-working constituency man, is a dynamo, up since 4am this morning after an early-hours flash of inspiration to make one last appeal to first-time voters. He is taking nothing for granted, describing his Tory rival - 28-year-old Brown, a lawyer, Tae Kwon-Do black belt, now working with a "dynamic skills training company" called Speak with Impact - as "certainly the most energetic, organised, professional candidate I've ever fought".
The Lib Dem candidate he dismisses as "someone who doesn't even live in the constituency. The brains of the last campaign is away standing in Mid Lothian and took his brains with him."
So how did Labour manage to lose 5,000 votes between 2001 and 2003? "No way would I haemorrhage 5,000 votes. I would argue that Angus MacKay didn't quite have time to prove himself," he says carefully, repeating that he holds 140 "surgeries" a year, compared to his predecessor's 12.
"And my [ Lib Dem] opponent - an elected councillor - has 12."
A constituency observer reckons that people who vote for Griffiths do it as much for constituency reasons as for party. "It was Nigel, the constituency man, who managed to retain a lot of Labour people who would have left in 2001."
How many he will retain tomorrow is one great imponderable. He himself claims that the Tories are "within 500 votes" of his notional majority.
The new constituency boundaries, which have shunted another 11,000 mainly Conservative/Lib Dem voters on to his patch, create another. He blames the home secretary (Blunkett, one assumes) for this and clearly feels hard done by. Whether this is related to his close personal friendship with Gordon Brown (a former flat-mate and Griffiths's best man at his wedding) is left hanging.
An unabashed supporter of the Iraq war, he claims that as a doorstep issue it is "virtually zero".
He talks about the new schools and new hospital in his patch but he is up against much confusion among the electorate as to just how useful a Westminster MP is any more, given that Scotland now has its own parliament which holds the reins over the sensitive political issues such schools and hospitals.
Among those with words of support in his "Griffiths Report" are Friends of the Earth, author Ian Rankin and John Hume, who expresses his "deep gratitude" for Griffiths's "very consistent support for the peace process and of course for your friendship".