‘Is there something you want to share?’

I flash him my best fuck-off smile. ‘Just a feeling,’ I say, cursing my instinct always to show off when I know something.

We are twitchy. Elections are our World Cup finals. The individual games we report on can be dull, defensive affairs, but the prize at the end still lends every word and deed of the party leaders – every speech, press conference, broadcast and constituency visit – with life-or-death potential.

Of course, the idea that elections change anything in a fundamental structural way is only occasionally true. Usually Britain plods along in its smug mediocrity, regardless of who forms the government. Every now and then, though, a politician turns up who tantalisingly offers something different, something that persuades us that we can again be united, or great, or both. Such hope and promise usually ends in humiliation, bitterness and recriminations. Margaret Thatcher’s prime ministerial arc – from heartless sower of strife and mass unemployment, to heroine of the Falklands and economic renaissance, to the victim of a party coup – was the classic.

This time, the object of our excitement is the new Labour leader. All of us in the Lobby know our role is to write and create the first part of the myth of Johnny Todd. What we can’t know is whether his is a star that will rise and fall over a decade, or a flashy meteor that will have crashed and burned by the time the exit polls are announced at 10 p.m. on election day. Hero or zero, the story of the election will be his story.

‘A friend of mine in Downing Street says the PM is thinking of keeping out journos he doesn’t like from his press conferences,’ says the chap from the Mirror. It’s a plausible threat: the Prime Minister is famously thin-skinned. We agree it would be an outrageous assault on the freedom of the press, and that if anyone is kept out then none of us will turn up. A fine sentiment. If push comes to shove, the professional advantage of being a scab is bound to triumph.

‘So, gents,’ says Wilkinson, ‘what’s the real story about Labour and tax?’

This is a predictable topic, given that the Tories brought to a grinding halt Labour’s momentum in the polls at the last election with the charge they’d put up taxes for everyone. ‘Specifically,’ Wilkinson continues, ‘we need a line on what the government has up its sleeve to neutralise Labour’s pledge not to raise income tax.’