Trying to make any kind of sense of the 2023 local election campaign in Suffolk is difficult because there appear to be so many different battlegrounds across the county.

And it is all set within a national context that has been dominated by gaffes and strange decisions.

Nationally the Labour Party started the election campaign with its biggest mistake for years - launching the offensive attack ads on Rishi Sunak - and then doubling-down on them.

Apart from the fact that they looked as if they'd dived into the political gutter from which Boris Johnson launched his Jimmy Savile smears agains Sir Keir Starmer, the question about sex offenders also opened up the issue of who had more to do with sentencing policy in the early years of the Tory-led government - the Director of Public Prosecutions or a City of London Hedge-Fund manager.

Sir Keir would have been well-advised to have disowned the posts, or at least fudged the issue, rather than backing them once he came under fire from across his own party.

However when the Corbynistas started having a go at him, I did wonder if they were playing the man rather than the ball.

It was interesting that they were so keen to jump on his lapse of judgement but had been totally incapable of noticing Jeremy Corbyn's total failure to comprehend the damage that Anti-Semitism was causing to his party!

Ipswich is really the only part of Suffolk where there is a traditional Labour/Tory contest this year - the Greens, LibDems and Independents tend to be more influential in the more rural districts.

For years I've gone on about parties going on about issues that have no council element to them in local government elections.

Let's make it clear again: DISTRICT AND BOROUGH COUNCILS HAVE NO SAY IN HEALTH POLICY, SCHOOLS, POLICING, COST OF LIVING ISSUES OR HOW YOU STOP MIGRANTS COMING OVER THE ENGLISH CHANNEL.

Ipswich Tories seem to have got that message in the literature they sent out.

I'm sure their opponents would say that's so they don't have to talk about the government's failings - but it is quite refreshing.

What is also new is that they've sent out a message from Ipswich MP Tom Hunt to people living in North West Ipswich which is in the seat of his fellow Conservative Dr Dan Poulter.

Having lived in the area for 36 years this is the first time I remember this happening - and I understand it came as a bit of a surprise to Dr Poulter's constituency officials.

One said to me that they had no argument with the message and thought he would have liked to endorse it with Mr Hunt to show it was backed by both MPs for Ipswich - they were keen to put it down to a communication glitch.

Having said that Ipswich Labour Party leaflets in this part of the world do contain pictures of Jack Abbott - maybe they think we'll bask in the nostalgic glow of the 2015 general election when he stood against Dr Poulter.

Of course this year's local election in Ipswich is pretty small beer - the borough will remain firmly in the hands of Labour after May 4.

This week much of the focus - both locally and nationally - has turned on Mid Suffolk where the Greens hope to take their first district in England.

The Tories haven't exactly given up there - but I hear they feel they're very much involved in a rearguard action mainly focussed on trying to retain the seats they hold. 

That's probably going to be the council that gets most attention once the counting of election votes starts.