The Tories are partying like it’s 1992. Sir John Major is being wheeled out today to reinforce what Michael Fallon and others have said: the SNP are dangerous for Britain. Labour will continue with its ‘NHS week’ by promising more money and outlining what they will do on entering government. To help guide you through the melée of stories and spin, here is a summary of today’s main election stories.
1. Major moment
While Tony Blair’s standing has gone down since he left office, John Major’s has increased. He is now looked upon fondly by many Conservatives, coming from a time when the party won majorities and didn’t have to worry about threats from Ukip or the SNP. David Cameron will be hoping that Major’s gravitas will lend weight to the argument that the Scottish nationalists pose a significant threat to the future of Britain. According to today’s Telegraph, Major will describe an Ed Miliband government backed by the SNP as a ‘recipe for mayhem’:
‘At the very moment our country needs a strong and stable government, we risk a weak and unstable one – pushed to the Left by its allies, and open to a daily dose of political blackmail.’
But not all Tories are convinced that talking up the SNP is a good strategy. The former Scottish Secretary Michael Forsyth has warned that Conservatives are playing a ‘short term and dangerous’ game. He told the Guardian, ‘The Tories are entering into a dangerous, destructive embrace of the nationalists which is bad for Scotland, it is bad for the UK…this will end up with the destruction of the UK’.
On the Today programme, another old hand David Steel popped up to say that Major ‘never understood Scotland’, Forsyth was right about the dangers of puffing up the SNP and predicted the election will result in a minority Labour government. Other Tories are continuing to attack the SNP for cosying up to Labour — Boris Johnson likened the SNP in government to asking ‘King Herod to run a baby farm’ yesterday — but it has yet to result in any kind of poll bounce. We’ll see if Major has the magic to help.
2. Labour’s NHS money tree
Ed Miliband was pretty much knocked off the news agenda by the SNP’s manifesto yesterday. He will be hoping that his announcement of 20,000 extra nurses by 2020 today will gain some momentum. The Labour leader will announce in Manchester that on his first day in office, he will order university admissions to be reopened for oversubscribed nursing courses.
On the Today programme this morning, shadow health secretary Andy Burnham promised more money for the NHS ‘this year and next’ and claimed ‘we will get the funds flowing immediately into the NHS’. No talk of where all this new money for the health service will be coming from.
3. Farage vs. BBC, round three
Following his two recent attacks on the state broadcaster for biased audiences, Nigel Farage has come up with a new way of continuing the battle and appealing to his core base: slashing the license fee. In Rochester last night, Farage said the BBC was ‘one of the greatest global brands this country possess’ but thinks its remit is too big. ‘I would like to see the BBC cut back to the bone to be purely a public service broadcaster with its international reach and I think it could do that with a licence fee that is a third of what it currently is,’ he said. Although the Culture Select Commitment said the license fee is becoming ‘harder to justify’, the idea of chopping the Beeb right down would thrill both kippers and disaffected Tories.
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