This week we start a new round-up, summarising the election blogosphere.  Posted by Chris Gilson.

Monday saw the breaking of ‘Lobbygate’ with several ex-Cabinet Labour Ministers being found by Channel 4’s Dispatches programme to have offered their influence on government policy for cash. Guido Fawkes’ quote of the day is Stephen Byers’: “I’m like a cab for hire – at £5,000 a day.”– referring to the recently broken cash for access scandal, and begins a competition for readers to guess the number of laws he may have broken as well as referring to an online petition for Byers to be removed from the Privy Council. Michael White at Guardian Politics is sceptical that the affair will have a great deal of impact on either party’s electoral performance; he says that the Tories “will regret” making it into an election issue. Later, Patrick Wintour (also at Guardian Politics) asks “Is Stephen Byers doing more damage for Labour than the BA strike?” Iain Dale is exocriating of Byers, as is Labour MP Kerry McCarthy at Shot by Both Side:

“Let me put a few things on the table. If you’re privileged enough to be elected to Parliament, that is what you should spend your time doing. No second jobs. A lot of MPs are…standing down in May, but until then, they were elected to do a job, to serve their constituents. They’re being paid to do that job. And in putting themselves and their venal desire to line their pockets first, they’ve let down everyone in the Labour Party, who has been out there working for a Labour fourth term”.

At Left Foot Forward, guest writer, economist Michael Whittaker discusses how this week’s budget is an opportunity to introduce active labour market programmes which may help to boost the economy and help future cost savings. Left Foot Forward also reports the Tories’ ‘Cash Gordon’ website (which attacks Labour’s links with the Unite union) has crashed due to hacking. #CashGordon trends at number 2 on Twitter. Iain Dale asks – “where is the Lib Dem policy document on public finances?”. Cristina Odone at the Telegraph thinks Sam Cameron’s just announced pregnancy is an election-winner for the Tories, but Michael White at Guardian Politics questions whether or not it will have much impact. Sunder Katwala at Next Left contemplates Michael Gove’s changes of heart towards the centre ground since 1999.

On Tuesday, the fallout from the cash-for-lobbying scandal continued to settle, and Wednesday’s budget was anticipated.  Nick Robinson, the BBC’s Political Editor, has a description from a friend of one of the former Labour Ministers in the ‘cash-for-lobby’ scandal of their treatment by the PLP: “pure revenge plus”. Guido Fawkes pictures Labour’s ‘Dirty Dozen’. Will Straw at Left Foot Forward looks at coverage of the Tory campaign in the US – and talks of the risk that the Tories’ euro-scepticism would make the UK “less relevant” to the States; later he describes the “hypocrisy” of the Tories attacking the vested interests of the City, when most of their front bench have received financing from financial firms. Sunder Katwala at Next Left discussed ConservativeHome’s suppression of a post by a London Tory think-tanker “Ridley Grove” (not his real name) calling for George Osborne to resign. Guest writer at Left Foot Forward, Nigel Stanley of the TUC, dispells the Daily Mails’ claim that public sector pensions cost every worker £47k and Matthew Engel at the FT pronounces the Blairite era as “officially over”.

Wednesday was budget day, and this dominated the political blogosphere. Bloggers did find some time, though, to discuss the narrowing Tory/Labour poll gap. Both of these topics dominated the rest of the week. Iain Dale has the quote of the week re: the Budget on Wednesday:

“You would have thought the Chancellor would be outlining specific measures designed to get public debt under control. You would have thought he would have outlined a number of specific tax raising measures designed to cut borrowing….He couldn’t do that, because if he told the truth about the measures he really needed to take, he would have frightened too many electoral horses. The closest he got to doing that was to add another 10% tax on cider, this upsetting the whole of the west country and half of the nation’s teenagers at the same time.”.

Toby Helm at Guardian Politics also neatly summarises today’s budget: “The Tories wanted to be able to claim Labour had no plan to cut the deficit. Budgets often fall apart in the days after as they are subjected to detailed analysis. But in the immediate aftermath the Tories were left, temporarily perhaps, a little nonplussed by a more interesting one than we were lead to believe would be the case.”

Paul Waugh at the Standard, looks at the budget Red Book in detail, and notes the lack of evidence for £18bn in spending cuts as the Chancellor stated in his speech. Tim Montgomerie at ConservativeHome finds a £2.2 bn stealth tax increase in the budget through the freezing of tax allowances, and Benedict Brogan at the Telegraph springboards off the budget to anticipate a “fight to the death” between now and Election Day.

Sunder Katwala at Next Left ponders the closing Labour/Tory poll gap:

“The evidence is growing that the public are yet to be convinced by arguments for very heavy cuts in public services. On balance, they are more concerned on the impact of cuts on public services than the consequences of not cutting for the budget deficit. And they appear more open to a balanced approach to spending cuts, tax increases, debt and the pace of deficit reduction than many commentators would like. The response from much of the commentariat, especially on the right, is to charge the public with denial: ‘they just don’t get it. National bankruptcy stares us in the face’. But it doesn’t.”

Will Straw at Left Foot Forward looked at recent polls suggesting a hung parliament as well as those that put George Osborne in third place on voters’ lists of ‘the most capable candidate for Chancellor’.

On Thursday, Toby Young at the Telegraph looked at the YouGov Poll which put Labour and the Tories a mere two per cent apart – and asked What’s going on?. Will Straw at Left Foot Forward then looked at George Osborne’s response to the budget, and at whether or not the tax allowance freeze is actually a ‘stealth tax’. The BBC’s Nick Robinson interviews Alistair Darling who says that his cuts will be “worse than Thatcher’s”, though –  this is apparently at odds with Labour’s message of savings through efficiency measures rather than through cuts. Shamik Das at Left Foot Forward investigated the Tory claim that Council Taxes have doubled under Labour –  but finds that 30 out of the 50 Councils with the highest rates are run by Tories, and that central government funding has risen since 1997. Jonatahn Isaby at ConservativeHome plays down the re-engagement of M&C Saatchi by the Tories for their election advertising, quoting PR veteran Lord Bell: “At last, the Conservatives are starting to use professionals who have actually won elections before. If M&C Saatchi can produce the kind of brilliant work that we did, it will have a dramatic effect on the election outcome. This will frighten the other side.”

On Friday Guido Fawkes took Gordon Brown to task for selling off the UK’s gold reserves in the past decade, given the recent massive rise in the price of gold. Sunder Katwala at Next Left then gives what is quite an in-depth lesson to voters in how to vote in order to help cause a hung parliament.