Politics

Nobody’s perfect, are they? The IFS found something to criticise today for all the parties — the Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems and SNP — whose tax and spending plans it has examined. The main charges are of leaving questions about spending and borrowing unanswered: The Conservatives ‘have not been completely explicit about exactly what level of borrowing they would want to achieve’ and nor have the SNP, Labour has ‘provided disappointingly little information on what they would borrow’. There’s a gold star for the back of the Lib Dems’ exercise book: they have been ‘more transparent’ about their fiscal plans than other parties, but they get a rap on the knuckles too for saying that ‘largely unspecified’ anti-tax

Jim Murphy held a street rally in Edinburgh today. Given many of the election events from the main parties have been behind closed doors, the Scottish Labour leader deserves credit for pitching up right outside the Scottish National Gallery and standing for about an hour in a space where real genuine members of the public were walking.  He was, of course, protected by a rubber ring of activists wearing T-shirts with key Scottish Labour pledges on it, such as ending exploitative zero hours contracts and lowering tuition fees. They had placards with #toriesout splashed across them. And given the rally was secret and only advertised to the media before it

It’s St George’s Day so to celebrate Ukip held a press conference where they gifted red and white jester hats adorned with St George’s flags to journalists. Talk soon turned to the real crux of the matter: as a foreigner of alleged Turkish descent, would Ukip have allowed St George entry into the country? Patrick O’Flynn was on hand to answer the pressing immigration query: ‘If Ukip were in power in the third century then yes I suppose St George would be allowed in the country. He is a skilled migrant, he could slay dragons.’ A Ukip party spokesman has since gone one step further and suggested that St George