Politics

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

Thursday

Sebastian Payne

Campaign kick-off: 21 days to go

Now that all the manifestos are in the public domain, we are back onto more conventional campaign territory. The big event of today is at 8pm this evening, when the ‘opposition leaders’ will debate each other on the BBC in the final televised debate before polling day. To help guide you through the melée of stories and spin, here is a summary of today’s main election stories. 1. Here come the insurgents Tonight’s TV debate represents an opportunity for the smaller political parties to give Ed Miliband a good kicking. Nicola Sturgeon, Nigel Farage, Natalie Bennett and Leanne Wood will all relish the chance to turn on Miliband — the

Robert Smith

Exclusive: Where the next generation of MPs think the burden of cuts should fall

What do the next generation of MPs think with regards to public services, government spending and taxes? Coffee House has got its hands on new research by Ipsos MORI on the opinions of prospective parliamentary candidates from the main parties. The pollsters interviewed almost one hundred PPCs – 26 Conservative, 29 Labour, 20 Liberal Democrat and 11 SNP – who are all standing in marginal or safe seats, and therefore stand a good chance of making it to the green benches after the general election. Here are the points that stand out: 1: Defence cuts on the front line Defence cuts lead the way for both Labour and Liberal Democrat candidates who

Sebastian Payne

Who lies behind these three new pro-Conservative blogs?

Three new anonymous pro-Tory political blogs have popped up in recent weeks. All are rather curious: none carry bylines, and two are so technically similar that they could have been made in the same place. They were introduced to the world by Louise Mensch in a post for ConservativeHome. In fact, Guido Fawkes has suggested that Mensch might know who is behind them: So are they real? Or astroturf — a Westminster term for something that looks like grassroots but is actually from someone connected to the campaign? I’ve done some digging to find out more. Publicly Inconvenient Publicly Inconvenient is a cheerfully designed site, layered with cartoons by Gary Barker. Mensch described it as a ‘good policy blog’. The

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Mob rules

A spectre is haunting Europe — and knocking on the door of Downing Street. It has installed a president in France and a mayor in New York. It is causing mayhem in Spain and Greece and insurgency in Scotland and it may yet halt Hillary Clinton’s march to the White House. This idea — left-wing populism — is a radical, coherent and modern response to the financial crisis and the hardship suffered since. It is being effectively harnessed by Ed Miliband, taking him within touching distance of victory. And it may well become the creed that guides the next five years of British government. The Labour manifesto that was published

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron must show he’s not too posh to push

At 5.45 a.m. Lynton Crosby holds the first meeting of the day at Conservative campaign HQ. The aim is to work out what threats need to be neutralised that day and what opportunities should be capitalised upon. The early start isn’t macho posturing but a reflection of the modern media environment. The news now moves at such pace that a lie can go all the way round the worldwide web before the truth even has its boots on. The political weather is rarely more changeable than in a close election campaign. In this environment, the trick is to work out what actually matters: what might determine the election. But after

Robert Philpot

Jews against Miliband

When he was seven, Ed Miliband was taken to visit his grandmother in Tel Aviv. Pointing to a black-and-white photograph in her home, young Ed demanded to know who ‘that man in the picture’ was. He was told the man, David, was his grandfather and had died in Poland many years before he was born. Only years later did Miliband realise that his grandfather had been murdered by the Nazis for being Jewish. Miliband’s parents only narrowly escaped a similar fate: fleeing Belgium as the German armies overran it in 1940, his 16-year-old father caught the last boat from Ostend to Britain. In Poland, his mother — together with her sister

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Did the £20 million Norwegian’s pay row make BG cheaper for Shell?

Helge Lund was widely expected to go into domestic politics when he ended his successful tenure as head of Statoil, the Norwegian state oil and gas company. Instead, he was hired to run BG Group, the troubled former exploration arm of British Gas, but on a promise of such ludicrously rich terms — up to ten times his Statoil salary — that shareholders, the media and Vince Cable howled in protest. An embarrassed BG board had to scale back the offer, though it remained pretty fat and as I wrote at the time, ‘no mention of Lund, however good he turns out to be, will ever omit a jibe at

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

David Cameron’s Evan Davis interview: defenceless on defence

“I’ve got it too,” said David Cameron, whipping out the ‘contract with Britain’ he published five years ago. His team seems have prepared him for the format of Evan Davis’s BBC interviews: confront the subject with discomfiting material, probe a bit and see what happens. But he was less prepared for being challenged from the right.  Davis asked him on his failure to commit to the basic Nato minimum of spending 2pc of GDP on defence – in spite of his badgering other countries to do so at the Nato summit in Wales. “I don’t think that you’re willing to say Britain will stick to its international obligation on defence,” he said. “We’re keeping it clearly

Sebastian Payne

New poll shows Tories will benefit from Lib Dem collapse in South West

The Liberal Democrats are facing wipeout in their South Western heartlands. According to a new poll from ComRes/ITV News conducted in 14 Lib Dem seats, there is currently a 13-point swing to the Tories. If this was repeated on May 7, the Lib Dems would lose the following seats to their coalition partners: Bath, Cheltenham, Chippenham, Cornwall North, Devon North, Dorset Mid & Poole North, Somerton & Frome, St Austell & Newquay, St Ives, Taunton Deane, Thornbury & Yate, Torbay, Wells, Yeovil. Senior party figures who would be out include policy guru and Cabinet Office minister David Laws and the pensions minister Steve Webb. One of the reasons for the collapsing Lib

Steerpike Steerpike

Ukip win and lose a celebrity supporter in the space of an hour

Last year Mike Read had to withdraw his Ukip Calypso song from sale after a number people complained that it was racist. So Mr S was cheered to hear that there could be a turn in the party’s musical fortunes today after The Rifles voiced their support for Ukip. The indie band tweeted that Nigel Farage’s party are the only party ‘with the balls to make a change’: Alas, soon after the tweet was published it was hastily deleted and the band claimed that their account had been mysteriously hacked. Given that their most successful song reached only number 26 in the charts, Mr S suspects that the retraction of their support will not come

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The Ukip pledge that other parties may well adopt

One of the Ukip manifesto pledges that’s making certain types a bit grumpy today is a pledge to abolish the Department for Energy and Climate Change. Unite has said that this ‘beyond barmy and would create chaos’. Unite is a union and is naturally keen to support the jobs of those who work for DECC and in industries covered by the department. But this particular Ukip policy might be one that a party of government ends up adopting. Nigel Farage’s party’s manifesto said today that DECC should be abolished because its ‘essential powers and functions can be merged into other departments’. Influential Tories agree with this: in 2013, the Free

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The Tories may have a strong message but do they have any momentum yet?

The Tories have another election broadcast out tonight that builds on the message of their manifesto: that they are for hardworking blue-collar people and that if you want sunshine, vote Tory. To that end, every outside shot in the film is bathed in sunlight, and everyone is in a pretty good mood: laughing as they work, smiling fondly at a newborn baby, grinning as they climb up the stairs (a child). Most of the attacks on Labour are framed as positives: that the Tories are freeing people from ‘mountains of debt’ and that businesses ‘aren’t held back’. But there is a direct reference to Labour, which is in the section

Sebastian Payne

Ukip attempts a professional manifesto launch in Thurrock

There was one star of Ukip’s manifesto launch today: Suzanne Evans. For once Nigel Farage didn’t steal the show, it was the party’s deputy chairman — and the brains behind its ‘Believe in Britain’ manifesto — who came across as professional and reasoned. Over 100 people turned up at the Thurrock Hotel in Essex to see the release of the manifesto booklet. While it is a slick offering, and full of glossy pictures of its senior figures, it revealed nothing particularly new. The two main messages in Ukip’s manifesto were already briefed out in the Telegraph and Daily Express this morning: a pledge to increase defence spending beyond the 2 per cent Nato

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Clegg’s offer to voters: I’ll be the Tories’ heart and Labour’s brain

The Lib Dem manifesto launch was typically Liberal Democrat. Nick Clegg offered a robust defence of the coalition declaring simply that it ‘worked’. He argued that it had proved the superiority of multi-party government and said that in any future coalition the Lib Dems would be the Tories’ heart and Labour’s brain. This was a rather more pointed version of his refrain that the Liberal Democrats will be the Tories’ heart and Labour’s head. listen to ‘Nick Clegg launches the Liberal Democrat election manifesto – full speech’ on audioBoom

Toby Young Toby Young

If level-headed Oxford graduates are voting Green, what hope is there?

I’m disappointed that Ed Balls’s suggestion that the Office of Budget Responsibility should audit the parties’ manifestos was never taken up, not least because we will never know what Robert Chote thinks of the Green party’s claim that all its proposals are ‘fully costed’. Believe it or not, this includes the commitment to spend £45 billion on loft insulation in the next parliament. It’s quite something, the Greens’ manifesto. No doubt you’ll have already read about some of their more reasonable measures — such as the ‘complete ban on cages for hens and rabbits’ and the insistence that ‘UK taxpayers’ money is not used for bullfighting’. But the sheer scale

Steerpike Steerpike

Coffee shots: The best (silliest) manifesto photos

If voters pick up party manifestos, chances are they might not make it all the way through the 80-150 page tomes the people pitching for government have produced. But they might leaf through and look at some of the bullet points, graphics and the pictures. Here are some of the best (or perhaps the oddest) manifesto pictures from the three main parties: This woman is just so thrilled to be buying some sweets, which were only made thanks to the Tories’ long-term economic plan. This kid is definitely hiding something behind his back, and it’s not the detail of George Osborne’s £12bn welfare cuts. This student is hoping the Tory photographer

Sebastian Payne

Campaign kick-off: 22 days to go

Three manifestos down, two more to go. Yesterday, the Conservatives launched their plan for government and promised to be ‘the party of the working people’ while the Green Party promised to end the ‘disastrous policy of austerity’ and increasing government spending by £170 billion a year. Today, Ukip and the Liberal Democrats take their turns to explain what they’d like to do. To help guide you through the melée of stories and spin, here is a summary of today’s main election stories. 1. Believe in more spending Ukip is returning to Thurrock for the second time this week to launch its 2015 manifesto. Aside from the usual promises we’ve come to expect — leaving the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Lib Dems launch their manifesto with fairy lights and funky music

The Lib Dems are launching their manifesto this morning. In keeping with their whole slightly bizarre national campaign, which has seen Nick Clegg touring the country apparently completing a Bucket List of fun things he’d like to do before a bruising election result, the launch appears more like a birthday party than stage-managed political event. There are multi-coloured disco lights, fairy lights and funky music. Nick Clegg will speak shortly, and will warn that the Lib Dems are the only sensible alternative to the ‘coalition of grievance’ offered by other minor parties. As with his appearance in the TV debate, the Lib Dem leader wants to pitch his party as

Ed West Ed West

The Green Party manifesto reads like a pamphlet for a religious sect

Of all the contradictory ideas in the Green Party’s manifesto, I love their plan to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14, while at the same time lowering the voting age to 16. So in just two years someone could go from not understanding the basic difference between right and wrong, to being able to decide who runs the country and sets its macroeconomic policy. That’s a steep learning curve to say the least. As I wrote before, the Green Party is an organisation living with extreme cognitive dissonance. They support secularism, environmentalism and population control policies, yet also open borders and pacifism, even though this would

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Are the Conservatives being honest about their new minimum wage policy?

The Conservatives have sent out a campaign email from David Cameron this evening promoting their key manifesto pledges. You’d expect that: now’s the time to galvanise activists’ support. But there is one line in there that jars: ‘Everyone earning the Minimum Wage lifted out of income tax altogether.’ This isn’t true. Cameron was quite careful in his speech today to say that the Tories will make sure ‘no-one on the Minimum Wage who works 30 hours a week pays any income tax on their wages’. If you’re working 40 hours a week on minimum wage pay, you will continue to pay income tax. So when the email says ‘no one’,