Election 2015: Nick Robinson, one man who’d welcome a second election

Miliband fails to rule out SNP pact

Posted at 10.00, Tues 17 March 2015

Ed Miliband yesterday ruled out a formal coalition with the SNP who are expected to hold the balance of power on 8 May. There will be “no SNP ministers in any government I lead” he promised.

However, The Mole writes, he refused to rule out a more informal post-election deal under which the SNP – expected to win as many as 50 seats at Westminster – might support a minority Labour government on a vote-by-vote “confidence and supply” basis.

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Cameron has already described the prospect as “an alliance between those who want to bankrupt Britain and those who want to break it up.” Expect to hear that line repeated ad nauseam between now and 7 May.

Read The Mole’s column in full

Is Cameron-Clegg coalition doomed?

Posted at 10.00, Tues 17 March 2015

The Cameron-Clegg coalition appears to face inevitable collapse on 7 May. Or does it, Don Brind asks.

A Polling Observatory prediction is clear: the Tories will win only 265 seats on 7 May and the Lib Dems 24. That adds up to 289 – way short of the 326 seats needed for a working majority.

But Peter Kellner of YouGov believes the government will enjoy a swing towards it as election day approaches. He predicts the Tories will emerge just shy of 300 seats and the Lib Dems will do better than expected and hang on to 30 MPs.

Between them, just enough to scrape together the magic 326. We shall see…

Read Don Brind's column in full

Whatever - Cameron wants to remain an MP

Posted at 10.00, Tues 17 March 2015

Perhaps seeing Tony Blair “take a step back” from his role as Middle East envoy has given David Cameron pause for thought regarding what he does next if he loses the general election to Ed Miliband.

In an interview with Buzzfeed, he indicated he’d like to remain as Tory MP for the comfortable Oxfordshire seat of Witney.

“I have 50 days to fight a vital election, I want to win re-election,” he said. “It’s the country’s choice. If they hoof me out and go for the other guy I’ll have to think of something else, but I hope I’ll still be an MP.”

Watch the Buzzfeed interview here

Budget: FT tackles Tory 'extremism'

Posted at 12.42, Mon 16 March 2015

As George Osborne polishes his Budget speech – possibly his last – a Financial Times editorial published today accuses the Tories of being too extreme in their approach to restore Britain’s finances to health.

“David Cameron’s decision to target a swift return to surplus, entirely funded through spending cuts, is deliberately and unnecessarily extreme,” the FT says. “The UK has only ever achieved such a surplus after much stronger growth and never after starting so deep in the red.

“Here the prime minister’s breezy confidence betrays inadequate curiosity about the consequences. His own backbenchers are already restive about further defence cuts but worse predicaments await in social care, policing and the National Health Service.”

The next Chancellor – whether that be Osborne or Ed Balls (though the FT mentions no names) - should turn his mind to the economy’s unresolved structural problems, says the FT.

“Britain leans too heavily on the housing market to drive demand and too little on exports and investment. Productivity growth has been woeful. Together these pose a greater long-term threat to the nation’s finances than imaginary bond market bugbears.”

Read the Financial Times editorial in full

Farage numbers don't add up

Posted at 12.30, Mon 16 March 2015

Nigel Farage has been a busy boy this weekend: one minute he's telling us he has only one testicle, the next he's saying he'll quit as leader of Ukip if he fails to win South Thanet on 7 May, and then he's offering to “support” the Tories in the event of a hung parliament.

As The Mole writes, the promise to quit as party leader should be giving Conservative Party chairman Grant Shapps the encouragement to "throw everything the Tories possess" at winning South Thanet and "decapitating" Ukip: many observers believe that without the charismatic Farage at the helm, Ukip will quickly fall apart.

But Shapps has a personal problem to deal with: it appears he's been caught fibbing on the radio. He told LBC a few weeks ago that he never held down a second job while working as an MP: now The Guardian had found evidence to the contrary and, amid calls for his resignation, Shapps has had to admit that he "screwed up".

Read The Mole's column full

Read Don Brind on Farage's offer of a pact

Read 'Farage has only got one… chance to remain leader'

Last word on Miliband’s ‘Kitchengate’

Posted at 12.30, Mon 16 March 2015

There are many valid reasons for criticising Ed Miliband, says Dan Hodges at the Telegraph, but how many kitchens he has is not on the list… “One kitchen. Two kitchens. Functional kitchenette. Soviet-era style kitchen collective. I couldn’t care less. And I suspect there isn’t a single voter who cares either.”

But there should be clearer rules of engagement when it comes to dealing with politicians’ spouses and families, he argues.

“First, we have to drop the fiction that becoming a politician means every aspect of your life immediately becomes public property. There is no public interest case for seeing Ed Miliband’s washing machine. Nor, in truth, is there much public appetite for it.” Neither the media nor their own advisers should be badgering politicians for “soft-focus” glimpses into their private lives.

However…. If a politician insists on blurring the lines between their public and private lives, then on their head be it. “It’s none of my business what Ed Miliband and Justine Thornton’s kitchen looks like. Unless, of course, they decide to make it my business.”

Read Dan Hodges’s article in full

Blair opens a can of Unite worms

Posted at 12.30, Mon 16 March 2015

Tony Blair has angered some union leaders and Labour MPs by reportedly brokering a secret deal in which the party’s biggest business backer, Assem Allam, has promised to give Labour £1m if the party “stands up” to Unite boss Len McCluskey and takes the risk of losing a £1.5m donation from the union.

McCluskey, says the Sunday Times, is demanding that Labour put Karie Murphy, “a Unite activist who became embroiled in a vote-rigging row in Falkirk in 2013”, on Labour’s shortlist of candidates for Halifax, due to be unveiled this week.

At a dinner hosted by Blair, the paper claims, Allam, whose business interests include chairing Hull football club, told Ed Miliband he would give Labour £300,000 on top of the £200,000 he has already handed over this year – and promised a further £500,000 if Miliband faces down McCluskey.

Jim Sheridan, Labour MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, who chairs the Unite group of Labour MPs, condemned the “underhand” tactic. “Unite have just given £1.6m to the party to try to get Ed Miliband into power so if this guy [Allam] or Blair are working against the party, then I think people will be really angry and frustrated.”

Read the Sunday Times article in full

Ukip get a boost from two polls

Posted at 11.17, Friday 13 March 2015

After several weeks of flatlining or dropping in the opinion polls, Ukip hopes appear to be on the rise. Yesterday’s Ipsos-MORI monthly monitor had Ukip up four points on 13 per cent. (Lab 34, Con 33, Ukip 13, Lib Dems 8, Greens 6).

And today’s YouGov poll for The Sun also gives Farage’s party a rare increase – by two points up to 16. (Con 33, Lab 32, Lib Dems 7, Ukip 16, Greens 6.)

The two polls were released just as Nigel Farage was busy claiming that remarks he made about anti-race discrimination legislation being scrapped if Britain was ever to be governed by Ukip were “willfully misinterpreted”.

The Guardian reported last night: “Farage hit back on several fronts … saying he had not been talking about anti-discrimination law but the ability of employers to have a presumption in favour of British workers over migrants.”

In an article for The Independent, Farage wrote: “There appears to be consensus between Labour, Lib Dems, and the Conservatives that nothing can or should be done about the burgeoning unemployment rates amongst British young people, be they black, white, Asian, or otherwise.

“If I’m not allowed to make the point that these people – our people – should not be discriminated against in favour of migrant workers from southern and eastern Europe – then we may as well be honest with young people in this country and tell them to go abroad and find jobs elsewhere. So which is it?”

PM to FT: I want another five years

Posted at 11.00, Fri 13 March 2015

In an extended interview with the Financial Times, David Cameron has talked about his hopes for Britain and why he wants a second term as Prime Minister.

“The ambition is for Britain to be the best place in Europe to start, grow and run a business, schools where we are not lagging in the tables but we’re absolutely busting through the top, a welfare system where it pays to work, where you’re always better off in work," he said. "And from this a sense that the values of the country will have changed to be ones where people feel deep national pride.”

Read a brief account of the interview here

Read the Financial Times article in full

Gimme 5 more too, Sam Cam tells The Sun

Posted at 11.00, Fri 13 March 2015

David isn’t the only Cameron who wants another five years in Downing Street – his wife Samantha says she “desperately” wants him to be re-elected and serve a full second term.

“Obviously, it’s up to the British people,” she told The Sun in an interview to publicise Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day. “If he wins we will be here for another five years.”

She spoke of the couple’s efforts to get the work-life balance right, saying the PM gets up at 5.30am so he can get his paperwork done and still join the family for breakfast.

“There’s nothing we don’t do. We go to the cinema, take the kids to the school… We go to the school quiz night. Normally we do quite badly. I’m terrible at general knowledge. I get my husband to do history and politics.”

Read The Sun’s article in full

‘Two kitchens’ Miliband under fire

Posted at 11.00, Fri 13 March 2015

Whether you call it a storm in a teacup or a kitchen sink drama, it's another pain in the neck for Ed Miliband.

As The Mole writes, he's been dubbed 'Two kitchens' Miliband after a BBC TV crew visited his north London home and filmed him posing in what the Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine called a "bland, functional" kitchen reminiscent of "Communist era" housing.

Actually, this is the Milibands' "kitchenette", according to those who know, and there's another perfectly nice kitchen at Miliband Towers, which for some reason, viewers were not invited into.

Read The Mole's column in full