Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

Exclusive: David Cameron’s official biographer responds to Lord Ashcroft

This morning Lord Ashcroft wrote a blog post for ConservativeHome detailing information regarding his upcoming biography of David Cameron, Call me Dave. Ashcroft, who is known to have a lukewarm relationship with the Prime Minister, said that the book will be published in the autumn, after the election. He went on to claim that Cameron’s official biography, which is being written by Sir Anthony Seldon, is to be ‘rushed’ out to ‘avoid a clash’ with his own: ‘Apparently he is being encouraged to do so by Number 10. Having originally planned to publish during party conference season, I am told that he now intends to publish at the end of July. Number 10

Sebastian Payne

Ten things you need to know about Labour’s manifesto

Labour has launched its election manifesto in Manchester today, entitled ‘Britain can be better’. The document (pdf here) includes some new policies and others already announced. Here are ten key things you need to know, just in case you don’t have time to read all 86 pages: 1. Reducing deficit every year — but for how long? The centrepiece of the manifesto is the ‘budget responsibility lock’, which will ensure that a Labour government will cut the deficit every year. The commitment, which was reportedly added to the manifesto last Friday, doesn’t say by which point Labour will eliminate the deficit: ‘A Labour government will cut the deficit every year. The first line of

Steerpike Steerpike

Did anyone proofread the Labour manifesto?

‘Do you mind not splitting your infinitives then. Dear me’, said Alastair Campbell to a Tory candidate on Twitter last night. After chastising Beth Prescott, who is standing against Yvette Cooper in Normanton, Campbell was given an earful: .@campbellclaret I’m a young, Northern, former apprentice trying to make a positive difference&best you can do is patronise me?@LouiseMensch — Beth Prescott (@Beth4Pontefract) April 13, 2015 Ouch. While we are on the topic of perfect grammar, shall we have a look at Labour’s manifesto? The one that Campbell has been spinning all day. ‘We are a great country’ says the foreword. Britain is a great country, yes. We are the people of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why Labour’s bold manifesto move won’t work

Labour’s manifesto is the most daring move of this campaign so far. The party has decided to try and address one of its biggest weaknesses on page 1 of the document. The decision to make Labour’s fiscal locks, its attempt to show that it is fiscally credible, the major story of the manifesto is a risk. It means that Labour is playing on Tory turf. The party’s hope is that these fiscal locks can reassure voters that Labour wouldn’t spend and borrow too much, removing one of the main obstacles to supporting them. Indeed, with Ed Miliband doing a far better job than expected of assuaging voters’ doubts about his

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Is Labour really wise to take on the Tories on the economy?

Ed Miliband gave a good, forceful, well-received speech at Labour’s manifesto launch this morning. It couldn’t have been anything else, given how close we are to polling day. There were some very well-delivered moments, particularly when it came to zero hours contracts and non-doms. The peroration was particularly energetic, with the Labour leader saying: ‘Over the last four and a half years, I have been tested. It is right that I have been. Tested for the privilege of leading this country. I am ready. Ready to put an end to the tired old idea that as long as we look after the rich and powerful we will all be OK.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

When will broadcasters challenge Ed Balls on his porkies about his deficit plans?

At Coffee House, we occasionally criticise George Osborne for stretching the truth when describing the deficit — but when it comes to hoodwinking broadcasters and deceiving voters, Ed Balls is the master. Three times on the radio today he lied about Labour’s plans, saying that he intends to have the national debt falling. He has no such plans: what he means is that he plans for the national debt to rise, but to rise more slowly than the economy is growing. What he means is that his plan is not for the debt to fall, but for a ratio to fall: the debt/GDP ratio. And it isn’t very ambitious, because that ratio already is falling. listen to ‘Today:

Sebastian Payne

Campaign kick-off: 24 days to go

The third week of the campaign is going to be all about manifestos. Today, it’s Labour’s turn to launch its plan — while the Tories, Liberal Democrats, Ukip and Greens will take their turns in the coming days. But instead of the traditional strategy for government, folks in Westminster are describing the documents as ‘the opening salvo for coalition negotiations’. To help guide you through the melée of stories and spin, here is a summary of today’s main election stories. 1. The party of fiscal responsibility? There’s one big story to watch today: Labour’s manifesto. Many inhabitants of the Westminster bubble are currently en route to Manchester for the launch this

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour tries to confound expectations with tough-sounding manifesto front page

Labour’s manifesto launch today sees the party seeking to confound expectations. Even though the party would prefer to fight a comfortable election campaign on the NHS, the fact remains that no party has won when behind in the polls on both the ratings of its leader and on the economy. And so the first page of the party’s manifesto, which was released last night, says this: ‘Our manifesto begins with the Budget Responsibility Lock we offer the British people. It is the basis for all our plans in this manifesto because it is by securing our national finances that we are able to secure the family finances of the working

Sunday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tories on £8bn NHS commitment: Trust in me

Towards the end of last week, the Tories were looking a bit miserable. Their slow response to Labour’s non-coms announcement, coupled with a ‘dead cat’ response from Michael Fallon which made the party look rattled and unpleasant had left the Conservative campaign looking unusually disorganised and slow-witted. But ministers have tried to pick things up, and some of their announcements in particular have left Labour in a similar mess. The story that David Cameron’s party will meet the £8bn demand for health funding from NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens has left Labour hopping around looking a bit cross and awkward. This was not how the party had planned things:

Louise Cooper

The truth behind David Cameron’s new inheritance tax policy

David Cameron’s new Inheritance tax policy is clearly an important political message of aspiration and family values rather than a policy that will either help many or actually have much fiscal impact. The OBR has numbers on death rates and estates subject to the tax: just under 600,000 people died in 2013/14 and only 5 per cent of those had estates that were liable to inheritance tax. So that is just over 26,000 deaths in one year whose estates paid inheritance tax. According to the Telegraph, Cameron’s policy would only begin in 2017, two years into the next parliament. So three years of this policy and on 2013/14 rates this

James Forsyth James Forsyth

This week, the Tories must seize the initiative

Even Tory insiders admit that while they broadly had the better of the first week of the campaign, Labour had the better of the week just gone.  This makes it imperative for their hopes of re-election that the Tories wrest back the initiative this week. As I say in the Mail on Sunday, if they don’t, Tory discipline—which is already beginning to fray a bit—will crack, and Ed Miliband will have the keys to Number 10 within his grasp. The Tories have made a decent start to this task. Labour has been unsure of how to respond to the Tories’ commitment to give £8 billion more to the NHS. While

Michael Ashcroft

It’s now too late for Tories (or Labour) to change what people think about them

My most recent constituency polling has found an increase in support for Labour and the Conservatives (and, in their own battlegrounds, the Liberal Democrats) while the UKIP share has drifted down since last year. Even so, neither of the main parties has established a clear overall lead, either in national polling or in the marginals. So while the evidence is that voters may be focusing more on the parties capable of forming a government, they are not finding the choice becoming any easier – or more palatable. [datawrapper chart=”http://cf.datawrapper.de/PgOJF/3/”] The latest large-scale national polling I have conducted on the impact of the campaign helps explain why. Over the last month,

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What’s going on in Scotland

If the election in England is the political equivalent of trench warfare with Labour and the Tories inching forwards and then back, what’s going on in Scotland is a rout with the SNP driving all before it. What is remarkable is how the Nationalists are even in with a chance of winning seats such as Edinburgh South West that voted No by a more than twenty point margin. At the moment, everything their opponents throw at it seems to bounce off the SNP. The so-called Sturgeon memo, which claimed that she had told the French Ambassador that—contrary to all her public protestations—she would prefer Cameron to Miliband as Prime Minister,

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Did Mrs Thatcher ‘do’ God? Denis thought so, and he should know, says Charles Moore

As I swink in the field of Thatcher studies, this book brings refreshment. It is a welcome and rare. Far too many writers attitudinise about Margaret Thatcher (for and against) rather than studying her. I doubt the author likes Thatcher much, but all the more credit to her that she makes a fair-minded effort to understand what she believed about God, and how she succeeded and failed in applying her beliefs. Not all who knew Mrs Thatcher agree that she was religious. In a way, they are right. She was not churchy or denominational, which is good. She was not sacramental (she once told me that her twins were baptised

Steerpike Steerpike

The Sun gets cold feet about Labour

Earlier this month the Sun‘s election website ran a story about their plans to back Labour. In the online article, they teased that the paper was backing Labour, something which would come as a shock given that their owner Rupert Murdoch has an ongoing feud with Ed Miliband. IT’S OFFICIAL: We’re first out of the traps… http://t.co/nmQZX3lzAJ #SunNation pic.twitter.com/Tr4oxLI8x5 — Tim Gatt (@TimGatt) April 2, 2015 However, upon further reading of the article it became clear that instead of backing Miliband in the general election, they were simply supporting a rather dashing mutt called Labour in a greyhound race. Now word reaches Steerpike that little Labour had originally been meant for greater stardom than a fleeting mention. In fact, Mr S’s

Friday

Robert Smith

Deficit? What deficit? Labour candidates ignore key issue

Ed Miliband famously forgot to mention the deficit in his 2014 conference speech, but you would have thought that at least some prospective Labour MPs consider it to be a crucial issue facing Britain. The country is, after all, spending £46bn a year on debt interest payments alone – the equivalent of the Defence, Home Office and Foreign Office budgets combined. But not so, according to new research presented at a briefing by Ipsos MORI this morning. The pollster interviewed new prospective parliamentary candidates from each of the four main parties – all standing in marginal or safe seats – and asked them to name their political priorities. Of the

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour admit journalists ‘are people too’

Is Labour’s war on the media finally over? After Mr S reported this week that journalists were jeered for asking questions at a Tony Blair event, relations between the party and the media appear to have warmed. As Ed Miliband and Ed Balls head north of the border to campaign with Jim Murphy, it fell to the Scottish leader to make peace with hacks. Opening up their press conference in Edinburgh to journalists’ questions, Murphy declared they would let some ‘people’ ask questions too, once the pesky media had been dealt with: ‘It’s only journalists with their hand up at the moment, but they’re people too.’ A notable warming in relations, Mr S thanks

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Just to confuse matters, the Tories have launched two very incongruous policies

With every policy launch during an election campaign, it is worth asking why a party has chosen that policy and why it is launching it on that particular day. This is generally because answering those questions helps you work out what message a party is trying to send and whether they are on the defensive or offensive. But today it is worth asking this question simply because it would be nice to get an answer: why have the Tories launched two completely unconnected policies which don’t sound very Toryish on the same day? One of these policies is the freezing of rail fares, which begs the question, why did the Tories expend so

Tom Wilson

Why wasn’t the head of Hamas properly cross-examined during his BBC interview?

When journalists have the much sought after opportunity to interview the heads of states and organisations with appalling human rights records the very least we expect is to see such people given a thorough cross-examining. What we don’t expect is for heads of terrorist organisations to be provided with a platform from which to give the equivalent of a party political broadcast and to get away with it virtually unchallenged.  And yet that is precisely what we got when the BBC’s Middle East correspondent Jeremy Bowen recently interviewed Khaled Meshaal, the head of Hamas. Hamas leader Meshaal warns of Israeli ‘extremism’ after elections, reads the baffling headline that accompanies Bowen’s

Steerpike Steerpike

Have the Tories made an ‘electoral pact’ with Ukip?

This week David Cameron invited Ukip voters to ‘come home‘ to the Conservative party. ‘Come with us, come back home to us rather than risk all of this good work being undone by Labour,’ he pleaded at a campaign event. However for all of Cameron’s talk, Labour sources claim that the Tories would be quite happy to form a coalition with Ukip after the election. Now, Jonathan Reynolds, the Labour MP for Stalybridge and Hyde, says that a pact has been made in Tameside, the Greater Manchester borough, between Ukip and the Tories. It’s claimed that the parties have agreed not to stand against each other in a number of wards for the local election in