IF you judge the news agenda by the yardstick of what people will be talking about in the pub, yesterday will never be forgotten.

It began with the news of the Liberal Democrats' withdrawal from the fight for Worcestershire's Wyre Forest seat in favour of Health Concern.

It continued with Prime Minister Tony Blair being berated by a woman making points about the health service which, truth be known, many people would have wanted to make.

After Liverpool's heart-stopping UEFA Cup drama, it continued with John Prescott's seaside fisticuffs.

In Angel Place on a Saturday night, we're sure, such an incident would have rightly ended with both parties accompanying police to the station.

That's why the Deputy Prime Minister must keep a low profile when the law and order slice of Labour's freshly-launched manifesto is debated.

But don't run away with the idea that this is anti-Labour day. It isn't. It's anti-spin, fluff and waffle day.

The egg attack may have been no more justifiable than Mr Prescott's instinctive left jab, but it wasn't hard to see that the confronting crowd was wound-up about something.

When he speaks with his leader, they'll have plenty to talk about. They certainly need to.

What politicians fail to grasp - they're all as bad, even if Mr Hague did beat an early retreat when he was confronted by hecklers in Wolverhampton - is that the electorate can see what's vacuous and what's not.

Could all three of yesterday's incidents - and Jack Straw's slow hand-clap from the Police Federation - be traced back to the parties' obsession with news management?

More to the point, do Messrs Blair and Hague have what it takes to do anything off the cuff, as people do?

If either of them are "on-message", to borrow a ghastly political phrase, they'll realise that the lesson of Wednesday, May 16, is that the patronising we-know-best attitude is resented by the public.

Britain doesn't need a pat on the head and "run along now". We deserve better, and they'll have to deliver it.