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The British economy grew by 0.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2015, the slowest quarterly growth for two years. The Institute for Fiscal Studies pointed out many absurdities in party election promises, noting that most people would see tax and benefit changes that reduced their income; it said that the Conservative and Liberal Democrat plan to increase the personal allowance to £12,500 would not help the 44 per cent of people who now pay no tax, that Labour’s promised 10p tax band would be ‘worth a princely 50 pence a week to most income-tax payers’ and that it could not be sure whether the reintroduction of a 50p rate for high earners would raise any extra money for the Treasury. A trial for handling stolen goods was stopped when it was discovered that Cumbria police had mistakenly sold the bicycle in question.
Opinion polls showed the two largest parties still close, as they had been all year, the Lib Dems not much changed and Ukip down a touch. In Scotland, the Scottish National Party gained more than 50 per cent support in opinion polls, which could leave Labour and the Liberal Democrats with one seat each there out of 59, and the Conservatives with none. ‘I really feel so passionately about this election,’ shouted David Cameron, the Conservative leader, in a speech made with his coat off and his sleeves rolled up, declaring that seeing entrepreneurs start new businesses ‘really pumps me up’. In this condition he announced that he would pass a law forbidding himself from raising income tax, national insurance or VAT. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, put on a Cockney accent to be interviewed by the comedian Russell Brand on his YouTube channel. An Egyptian court sentenced Mike Coupe, the chief executive of Sainsbury’s, in absentia to two years’ imprisonment on strange charges of seizing cheques.
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