Liberal democrats

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

Election Night live blog

0843, JGF: The result in Hampstead and Kilburn is remarkable. The local Lib Dems were convinced that they would win. But Glenda Jackson survives by 42 votes with the Tories in second. 0639, PH: A dejected sounding speech from Nick Clegg. 0638, PH: Clegg says “this has been a disappointing night for the Lib Dems – and we obviously didn’t achieve what we hoped to achieve.” 0637, PH: In his acceptance speech, Nick Clegg is going big on the voting problems of last night. 0634, PH: Some good news for the Lib Dems: erm, Nick Clegg holds in Sheffield Hallam. With an increased majority. 0620, JGF: Jon Cruddas holds on,

Peter Hoskin

The party leaders vote

David and Samantha Cameron leaving the polling station in Spelsbury Gordon and Sarah Brown arrive to vote in North Queensferry Nick and Miriam Clegg vote in Sheffield

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

Two more polls point towards a hung parliament

Is this it? A couple more polls have been released, and – like all the others tonight – they point towards a hung parliament. An ICM poll for the Guardian has the Tories on 36 percent (up three points), Labour on 28 percent (no change), and the Lib Dems on 26 (down 2).  And a ComRes effort for the Independent and ITV has the parties on 37, 28 and 28, respectively. Most Tories I’ve spoken with this evening are, they say, mildly pleased with the opinion polls.  Not overjoyed, of course – but they feel their party’s greater firepower in the marginals means that numbers like those above will translate

Peter Hoskin

And now YouGov…

You want more numbers? Well, the YouGov figures for the Sun have just come in, and they are: the Tories on 35 percent (no change), Labour on 28 percent (down two), and the Lib Dems on 28 percent (up 4). So far tonight, all the polls have been in hung parliament territory (on an uniform national swing). And most have Labour and the Lib Dems more or less on level-pegging. More polls here and here.  There’s a good handful still to come, so keep your seat calculators to hand. UPDATE: YouGov also conducted some marginals polling. Here are Peter Kellner’s words from the YouGov website, by way of an explanation:

Peter Hoskin

Times/Populus has the Tories close to a majority

So the Times/Populus results are in, and they have the Tories on 37 percent (up one), Labour on 28 percent (up one), and the Lib Dems on 27 percent (down one). On a uniform national swing, this would leave us in hung parliament territory. But Tories I speak to are pretty confident that numbers like these, if replicated tomorrow, could give them a majority. Elsewhere, TNS-BMRB has the Tories on 33, Labour on 27 and the Lib Dems on 29.  Angus Reed for Political Betting has Tories on 36, Labour on 24, and the Lib Dems on 29.

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

An economic coalition makes political sense

If you believe, as most people probably do, that Robert Chote of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Mervin King of the Bank of England should be listened to, then two conclusion emerge: one, that a new government’s budget-slashing will be far, far worse than anything the main parties have hitherto acknowledged; and that after a parliament of deficit-busting, the party in charge will be severely punished by the voters. It stands to reason, therefore, that it would be better to spread the pain, even if one party has a near-majority or an outright majority. The Tories, even if they move passed the magic number of 326 seats, would do

Peter Hoskin

The campaign money game

Here’s a minor turn-up for the political anoraks’ scrapbooks: donations to Labour outstripped those going to the Tory party in the third week of the campaign. Brown & Co. were handed £1,416,863 against the Tories’ £645,250. Which is no sign of an effective campaign – after all, almost all of Labour’s publicity has been heavily negative. But it is a turnaround from the first week, when the Tories received £1,455,812 to Labour’s £783,159. Another thing to note is the downturn in Lib Dem donations. They jumped up to £120,000 in the second week, but have now sunk back to £64,000.  The Tories, in particular, will be hoping that that represents

Peter Hoskin

The Tories’ final onslaught

“Where’s the popcorn?” I thought, as I joined a bunch of journos to watch the Tories’ final broadcast of the election campaign. It was a good nine minutes long, and might as well have been titled The Downfall of New Labour. The opening shots were of Blair and Brown in 97: “a new dawn,” and all that. But Blair’s image soon faded to black-and-white, and we were bombarded with a montage of headlines, quotes and images which highlighted the failures of the Labour years. 10p tax. Falling education standards. MRSA. The misdemeanours of Peter Mandelson. Defence spending. Purnell’s resignation. Gillian Duffy. Even Manish Sood’s comments today. Depending on your disposition,

Daniel Korski

The G-men or the Granola Army

In the last stretch of political campaigns, things tend to get ugly as the real cost of winning and losing becomes clear. This one is no different, with its suggestions of tactical voting and disagreements about tactical weapons. The latter has become particularly viscious with a former spymaster, an ex-general and a former CT chief calling into question the securty and defence policies Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats. In their defence, the Lib Dems have positioned their biggest weapon, Paddy Ashdown, who fired a volley against Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, saying that “things had changed since he supplied intelligence to Tony Blair about Iraq and WMD”.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Clegg Might Need Cameron More than Dave Needs Nick

Paul Waugh has an excellent post on the difficulties and opportunities that will face Cameron if he falls short of winning a majority. Much of the commentary on this has hitherto focused on the difficulties but Waugh is right to suggest that, actually, a minority Tory ministry could probably pass a good deal of legislation and, just as importantly, effect change in other areas without the need for primary legislation. I doubt Cameron would want to run a minority government for more than 18-24 months but it’s worth noting that Stephen Harper’s minority ministry in Ottawa still stands and so does Alex Salmond’s in Edinburgh. Eventually, of course, the sheen

Peter Hoskin

Will the tactical voting plea work?

There’s only one question which matters when it comes to Labour’s tactical voting plea: will it work?  You can certainly see Brown & Co’s thinking on this.  This is the election, after all, where the Lib Dems have become a viable option for a lot more people – so they might act as a speed bump for people rushing away from Labour and towards the Tories.  And anything which depresses the Tory vote gives Labour a greater chance of holding the most seats in the House, and of making some kind of post-election pact with Nick Clegg. But as David said earlier, Labour’s osciallating stance towards the Lib Dems –

David Blackburn

From carpet-bombing to love-bombing

Labour’s relationship with the Lib Dems gets more like Dallas’s JR and Sue Ellen with each passing day. Contemptuous and contemptible one day to lisping breathless compliments the next.  Gordon Brown snarled at Nick Clegg during last week’s debate. Clegg would, Brown argued, leap gaily into bed with the Tories on Friday morning – a departure from the previous ‘we must form a progressive coalition’ line pushed by Andrew Adonis. This morning brings another volte face: Brown and several cabinet ministers urge ‘progressives’ to vote tactically. Writing in the Guardian, Gordon Brown pitches for Lib Dems to vote Labour in 100 Tory/Labour marginals. Peter Hain insists that votes are cast

Monday

Martin Bright

Old Comrades Drift Back to Labour

I have had a number of shocked emails from old friends on the left following my previous post here, which many saw as an endorsement of the Liberal Democrats. In fact, I remain one of the great undecided. This weekend I witnessed some good comrades embracing the party of the workers. Nick Cohen devoted his column in the Observer to the thesis (adapting Chesterton) that “when people stop believing in Labour they don’t believe in nothing – they believe in anything”. Meanwhile, Norman Geras of normblog has published the five reasons he will be voting Labour. There is much soul-searching out there in liberal Britain. The Observer’s brilliant but tortured endorsement of the Lib

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Cameron must avoid making deals with the Lib Dems

Even after the Gillian Duffy incident, tonight’s polls either point to a hung parliament or a gossamer Tory majority. So the prospect of a Con-LibDem alliance, being forged next weekend, remains all too real. In the leading article of this week’s Spectator, we urge Cameron to go it alone with a minority government – rather than enter into a pact, of any sort, with the LibDems. If Cameron fails to win a majority, he must form a minority government, do the best he can and then, when the time comes, ask the Queen for a dissolution of Parliament so he can ask the country for a majority. There are five

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why the Guardian should have backed the Tories

The Guardian missed a trick today. It should have endorsed the Conservatives. As a regular reader of that great newspaper, I can diagnose the ailment: it is confusing intentions with outcomes. It wishes for a more progressive society, greater equality and the betterment of the most vulnerable. But it has not quite worked out that these aims cannot be achieved by a powerful government: and that state-directed attempts at promoting a “progressive” society actually make it less equal, more regressive and end up empowering a bureaucratic elite. The Guardian lets itself down here: it has focused on what is said – not what is done. In doing so, it does

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Reasons to Like Nick Clegg

As a person rather than as a politician, I mean. David has already mentioned Clegg’s taste for Germanic* classical music and now there’s another reason to approve of him. He’s a Beckett fan. If he comes out for cricket and Wodehouse, his party can have my vote… Here he is on Sam: Every time I go back to Beckett he seems more subversive, not less; his works make me feel more uncomfortable than they did before. The unsettling idea, most explicit in Godot, that life is habit – that it is all just a series of motions devoid of meaning – never gets any easier. It’s that willingness to question

Friday

Alex Massie

The Guardian Comes Out for Clegg

As so it has come to pass: even the Guardian has abandoned Labour and endorsed the Liberal Democrats. I expect the Independent will do the same and that the Mirror may be the only (London) blatt to support Gordon Brown. Meanwhile and for the first time since 1992 the Times is backing the Tories. Perhaps the most notable aspect of the Guardian’s editorial is not its decision to support Clegg (this was predictable) but its repudiation of Labour’s central charge against the Conservatives: that they have not changed. The paper disagrees: This election is about serious choices between three main parties which all have something to offer. David Cameron has

David Blackburn

Labour’s campaign implodes

Labour’s campaign has been dysfunctional. ‘Bigot-gate’, the concealed cuts, the absence of a spending review, open challenges to the leadership, infighting and a manifesto that read like the terms of surrender, it has been beset by gaffes and self-immolation. Last night, Gordon Brown personified the desperation at Labour’s core. He was negative – dour predictions accompanying an ashen expression. He defibrillated the old cuts versus investment line – a lurid grope for his core vote and one that is incredible in the current circumstances. We expected all of that; what we did not expect was that Brown no longer agrees with Nick. Pitching for what remains of his position on

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tonight David Cameron turned in the performance he needed to. In the post-debate polls, Cameron has won three comfortably, one narrowly and tied the other

For the first forty-five minutes it was rather like the first debate. Brown attacked Cameron, Cameron hit back and all the while Clegg soared above it. But then immigration, Clegg’s Achilles heel, was thrown into the mix. Cameron went hard for Clegg over his amnesty policy, and Clegg had no clear answer—initially backing away from the policy, before coming back to it. Throughout this exchange, Cameron had covering fire from Brown. Clegg appeared knocked back as he came under the most sustained attack of the campaign and didn’t get back into his groove until his closing statement. In the meantime, Cameron capitalised; delivering some of his strongest answers of the

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Cameron shines, Clegg wobbles and Brown sinks

Well, Cameron saved the best till last. His aides are even joking that they could do with a fourth debate because their man is really getting in the swing of it. He looked more confident, assured – and spoke convincingly about immigration at last, a subject he fluffed last time. I’d place Clegg second. Brown was worse than awful: third in this debate, and will probably be third next week’s election too. Clegg was his usual telegenic self – in thespian terms, an accomplished performance. But he ran away from his own asylum policy, and was comically inept with the facts. He screamed at Cameron: “Will you admit that 80