SANDRA HOWARD, the shy wife of the Conservative leader, has just found her true voice.

The Tory party, aware that she is the most charming thing about Michael Howard, published her online diary yesterday, the first time a party leader’s wife has given such a candid day-to-day account of her election.

Mrs Howard, so elegant and demure in public, wasted no time in her blog laying into Cherie Blair’s hair, her husband’s fondness for pretty girls, and the “cheeky buggers” in opposition parties.

Her daily blog of course comes out fighting for Mr Howard, but it is also rushing in two weeks late for an online political battle.

Tony Blair and Charles Kennedy have daily campaign blogs on their websites, but the Conservatives have so far had nothing of the kind. It is the first British election where voters have been targeted so aggressively through their computers, as strategists recognise the influence that the internet had over the American presidential race.

Who’s winning? It’s hard to tell, since no party is confident enough to release readership figures for their leader’s blogs yet. But if Mrs Howard’s diary is more spirited than Mr Blair’s or Mr Kennedy’s, it may be because she is the only one to write it herself.

Mr Blair gives his staff an idea of what he wants in his blog, then will take a look before it goes live, whereas the Lib Dem site has a team of bloggers writing about, rather than for, their leader.

John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, also has a dedicated scribe following him round to capture his bons mots for the internet — a Boswell to his Dr Johnson.

Mrs Howard, who is writing a novel in her spare time, scribbles her diary while on the campaign helicopter. Three days into the campaign, she is unhappy about the way Cherie Blair has snapped up London’s best hairdresser for the campaign.

“A certain other leader’s wife has booked arguably the best and certainly the priciest hairdresser in town for the entire campaigning month ahead,” Mrs Howard wrote. “I reckon that gives me some good leverage in getting across that my hair deserves a look in, too.”

But it is not to be. Mrs Howard stoically has to resign herself to early-morning blow-dries from a female member of her husband’s staff.

Days later, the problem comes back to haunt her: “Vile rain: bad-hair day, Susie’s wonderful handiwork is like a flattened let-down balloon.”

No one can beat Mrs Howard for access: her husband tells her, for instance, how he “had an awkward, ‘peace be with you’ handshake” with Mr Blair at the Pope’s funeral.

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