We’ll be live-blogging tonight’s TV debate on Coffee House from 2030. Do, please, join us then. And, in the meantime, over on our special election site Spectator Live, Spectator panellist Gaby Hinsliff has written about why she doesn’t think tonight’s debate will be a make or break moment. And Reform’s Thomas Cawston has prepared a set of questions for the party leaders to answer.
In a move designed to take advantage of everyone’s need to fill air time before the debates, the Tories have launched a new ad spoofing that picture of Brown walking through a set of double doors while two aides squat on the ground holding it open. The ad is just up here in Manchester but the Tories will be hoping to get it onto the news broadcast and in to tomorrow’s paper. This is another example of how the Tory cash advantage is helping them.
I’ve just been watching the feed coming out of the studio where the debate is taking place and what struck me was how much of an advantage his central position will give David Cameron. In all the shots of the studio, the middle lectern is where your eye is drawn first. The leaders, I’m told, have all had half an hour in there to familiarise themselves with the surroundings. They now appear to be white-washing parts of the studio.
I’ve just arrived in the press room in Manchester where the media will be watching the debate; the hotel lobby is full of hacks and spin doctors. The question being asked is whether this is the moment that the electorate begins to engage with the election. Although I know that some in CCHQ worry that tonight’s debate could be so he said, she said that it deepens the public’s cynicism about politics. Today’s extreme weather has added an intriguing angle to tonight’s proceedings. Douglas Alexander, who along with Peter Mandelson will be working the spin room after the debate, has already claimed that Brown is concentrating more on the lines
Make what you will of his political agenda, but I think this is quite a refreshing admission from Zac Goldsmith today: “There are various things I have said in this campaign with absolute certainty. I said there will be no Heathrow expansion under our Government, there will be no charges for parking in Richmond Park and Kingston Hospital will be safe. If any of those promises are broken I will trigger a by-election and allow people to penalise my party.” It’s bound to rile some of his Tory colleagues, of course – particularly this close to the election. But one of the upshots of Parliament’s recent spate of scandals is
The leaders will be allowed to use their own make-up artists tonight. This might sound like a trivial detail but how the leaders look is, sadly, going to be an important factor in who gets the most benefit from the debate. I expect that the big beneficiary from being allowed to use his own make-up team will be Cameron. As his Newsnight interview during the 2005 leadership contest – when Cameron used his own not Newsnight’s make-up artists and as a result looked far better than David Davis had the week before – showed, the Cameron Team appreciate the importance of these details.
Hat-tip: ConservativeHome
There will be no shortage advice for David Cameron as he prepares for tonight’s TV debate. Wear this tie, smile a lot, be direct but not controversial and so on. The newspapers have been full of tips and lessons from the US debates. The Tory leader is also said to have hired Squier, Knapp, Dunn Communications, a DC-based political consultancy, specifically for help with the TV debates. Allow me to add my piece of (unsolicited but free) advice: don’t be Mr Angry. People want to like you; they want to feel that you can be trusted. They know they don’t like Labour. They know that the country needs change. But
Only 58? Labour’s last letter attacking Tory spending cuts this year had 60 economists’ signatures attached to it. Their latest, released today, has only 58. Number 10’s signature-marshalling skills are clearly on the wane. I sincerely hope that the Tories don’t marshal some economists of their own. The last time that happened, back in February, we witnessed the low point of the fiscal debate – with both sides using a bunch of academics as a substitute for a proper conversation with the public. And, lest we forget, Guido’s handy graph reminds us just what those economists were and are quibbling over anyway. This is a phoney war, so it’s little
The figures from YouGov’s daily tracker have just been released, and they have the Tories on 41 percent (up 2), Labour on 32 (up 1), and the Lib Dems on 18 (down 2) – so a lead of 9 points for Cameron & Co. It’s worth noting, as well, that the Tory manifesto comes out on top in supplementary questions about which has the best policies, which is most honest and which is the best for the country. But, to my eye, the most striking result is that relatively low level of support for the Lib Dems. I imagine that they’d certainly hope for better as they continue peddling their
Sorry is the hardest word and Gordon Brown stil hasn’t said it. But, everyday brings surprises. His ‘admission’ about his errors is the first time I’ve ever agreed with his economic analysis. In short, even Brown knows he’s not what he’s cracked up to be. Making such an admission at this stage of the election cycle is extraordinary. The intention may have been to make Brown look human. In which case, he’s succeeded, but to his detriment. Brown looks Biblically fallible. Labour’s campaign rests on one deduction. Gordon Brown built an era of prosperity; then Gordon Brown saved the country from a recession that originated in America; therefore Gordon Brown
Last summer, The Spectator received a letter from Charlie Whelan’s solicitors complaining about this post – where we mention their client’s spot of bother with his colleagues at Unite. Carter-Ruck were instructed on one of the no-win-no-fee deals: it cost Whelan nothing to sue, but could cost us £thousands to defend. So the lawyer’s letter is, by itself, an effective form of intimidation. A magazine with a small budget obviously faces huge pressure to do what he wanted: apologise, pay up and (suspiciously) undertake not to pursue the story any further. Under the circumstances, The Spectator could do only one thing. Our full investigation into Charlie Whelan is the cover story of tomorrow’s magazine
Looking at the papers this morning and watching the news last night, you realise what a benefit in the image stakes the Tory cash advantage gives them. The Tories can afford to hire out better venues than the other two parties. So while Labour launched their manifesto in hospital and the Lib Dems theirs at Bloomberg, the Tories used Battersea Power Station which provided them with much better visuals. We saw the same dynamic on the day the election was called: Labour’s event was in Downing Street, the Lib Dem one in an office and the Tory one on the terrace of County Hall looking over to Parliament The Mirror’s
On Sunday, on the Politics Show Vince Cable said that David Laws had been wrong to say on Newsnight that the health and international developments budgets were ringfenced. But the Lib Dem manifesto says the Libs Dems will, ‘Increase the UK’s aid budget to reach the UN target of 0.7 percent of GNI by 2013.’ This seemed contradictory to me so I called the Lib Dem press office who told me that you can ‘not ringfence a Budget but still increase it’ which left me even more confused about what the Lib Dem position on the DFID budget actually is: will it go up or down?
The Liberal Democrats are doing well. Very well. More voters seem actively to want a hung parliament – they neither hate Labour or love the Tories enough to act decisevely either way – and a vote for Nick Clegg seems a safe, fair choice. A few years ago Paddy Ashdown was over the moon to have won far fewer MPs than the party is hoping for at this election. Then came the “Iraq Bounce” with Charles Kennedy’s anti-war stance doing the party well. Many assumed that without a clear-cut issue, and having chosen a leader who looked like David Cameron’s younger brother, the Lib Dems might struggle. Instead, the party
Well, that was quick. After the Tories’ one-hour-and-forty-minutes-long manifesto launch yesterday, and Labour’s comparable event the day before, it was quite a relief that the Lib Dems got through theirs in a nerve-soothing 45 minutes. And that included introductions from Sarah Teather, Danny Alexander and Vince Cable, and a speech from Nick Clegg – all of them short, sharp and snappy. The only thing which seemed to drag was the Q&A session at the end. But timings aside, it was clear that the Lib Dems have hit on an issue which – they think – separates them from the other parties. In 2005, it was Iraq. This time around, deserved
Anyone else think that Labour’s latest poster is like a negative of the Tories’ “Vote For Me” effort? White text on a black background, instead of black text on a white background. A picture of Cameron, instead of Brown. I mean, the only thing that isn’t swapped over is the tone: both go on the attack, rather than presenting a positive vision. Labour’s message here is that the Tories’ Big Society manifesto washes its hands of the people. Which echoes the caricatures – “an agenda for abandonment” – that Peter Mandelson wheeled out yesterday, and which you can expect to hear again and again between now and polling day. The
So now it’s the Lib Dems’ turn to present their prospectus for the country. And, in some respects, I expect they’ll want a fairly uneventful day. They have, after all, endured the most topsy-turvy campaign of the three main parties so far. Brown has given us no more, and no less, than what we expected. The Tories have been riding the crest of a national insurance wave. But the Lib Dems have bounced around from the highs of Nick Clegg’s performance on Newsnight to the lows of their misleading VAT poster, from their continuing Labservative attacks to Ed Balls describing their schools policy as “creditable” on Sky this morning. Make
Insightful work from the FT’s Chris Giles, who has dug out a couple of academic articles – including one co-authored, in 2007, by George Osborne’s current chief of staff, Rupert Harrison – to work out how many jobs Labour’s national insurance rise might cost the economy. The results? Well, according to Giles, one says that 23,000 jobs will be lost, and the other comes up with 22,000. Neither of these are figures that Labour will want to crow about. But, as Giles points out, they are below the “57,000 jobs in small and medium-sized businesses alone” that the Conservatives predict in their manifesto. And they suggest that the national insurance
The Tories’ Invitation to join the Government was never going to dwell on defence. (You can listen to the brief chapter on defence here.) But that doesn’t mean defence isn’t an election issue. It is, and it’s one that the Tories will win. Brown’s defence record is abysmal even by his standards. Former service chiefs have described how Brown ‘guillotined’ defence budgets whilst fighting two wars, and field commanders in Afghanistan have made constant reference to equipment shortages. These accusations were corroborated by facts that Brown then tried to distort before a public inquiry. That’s not all. As Alex notes, buried in Labour’s manifesto, is an admission that the Defence