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

DUP leader raises prospect of Lab coalition

Posted at 11.52, Thurs 12 March 2015

Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party look more likely to enter a coalition with Labour than the Conservatives in the event of a hung parliament after their leader, Nigel Dodds, wrote: “We’ll back the party that scraps the bedroom tax.”

The DUP – currently eight-strong at Westminster – has often been mentioned as a potential partner for the Tories if David Cameron falls short of a majority (which all opinion polls are predicting).

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But Dodds’s bedroom tax demand – made in an article for The Guardian – appears to make that impossible. Dodds also demanded that whichever party he backs must prioritise defence and social justice and beef up border controls. There appears to be no reason why Labour should not meet such demands.

Lib Dems hit by 'dodgy donor' sting

Posted at 11.45, Thurs 12 March 2015

Having exposed the Tory Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Labour's Jack Straw for allegedly receiving "cash for access", the Daily Telegraph has now used an undercover reporter to catch a Lib Dem candidate apparently taking a "dodgy donation".

He is Ibrahim Taguri, well known in Lib Dem circles as a fundraiser and - until today - standing as the Lib Dem candidate in Brent Central.

In the light of the Telegraph report, he has quit the party - but he is currently insisting that he will still stand in Brent Central, but as an independent. As The Mole writes, the Lib Dems just wish he'd go away.

Read The Mole's column in full

Labour back in front, says YouGov

Posted at 11.45, Thurs 12 March 2015

Having shown the Tories pulling ahead this week, the latest YouGov poll has Labour back in front of the Conservatives by 35 to 34, Don Brind writes.

That is more in line with a month-long poll-of-polls average which shows Labour ahead by 33.3 to 32.7 per cent.

The margin may not be much, but according to the veteran number-cruncher Martin Baxter it means Labour could end up with 298 MPs against the Tories’ 267, giving Ed Miliband a better chance to form a coalition. David Cameron, says Baxter, is “far from victory”.

Read Don Brind’s column in full

Equality laws no longer needed – Farage

Posted at 11.45, Thurs 12 March 2015

Nigel Farage has been accused of "breathtaking ignorance" after saying a Ukip government would scrap much of the current discrimination legislation because it’s no longer needed in the British workplace.

Employers should be allowed to discriminate on the basis of nationality, hiring Britons over foreigners if they so choose, he said.

The Week’s First Reaction round-up has Number Ten calling Farage “wrong and desperate for attention” while Labour's shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan said: "This is one of the most shocking things I have ever heard from a mainstream politician and demonstrates breathtaking ignorance."

Read the First Reaction article in full

Grade backs PM vs 'bullying' TV chiefs

Posted at 09.41, Wed 11 March 2015

Michael Grade, the veteran broadcasting boss who has been chairman of both the BBC and ITV in his time, has backed David Cameron unequivocally in his stand-off with “bullying” broadcasters over the pre-election TV debates.

“Who do the broadcasters think they are?” Lord Grade asks in an article for The Times. “Their behaviour over the election debates leads me to believe they suddenly have grossly inflated and misguided ideas of their own importance.”

Grade says Cameron is entitled to take his stance – namely, that he will not debate head-to-head with Ed Miliband, and will take part in only one of the proposed multi-leader debates, and then only if it is held before the end of March, when the ‘short campaign’ begins.

The broadcasters are “playing politics”, says Grade, by “sending for political leaders” and bestowing airtime on them, and then threatening them with an “empty chair” if they do not come running. That is not democracy in action, it’s bullying – “a case of the broadcast media getting way ahead of itself”.

Read Michael Grade’s Times article in full

Justine Miliband hits the trail

Posted at 09.30, Wed 11 March 2015

Ed Miliband's wife Justine has given a feisty interview to the BBC to mark her entry into the election campaign at her husband's side, The Mole writes.

She says she knows the “vicious” personal attacks on her husband are going to get worse - and suggests they are in part a result of his decision to take on the Murdoch empire over phone-hacking.

Just one thing - don’t call her Justine Thornton, even though that's the name she normally goes by. Labour wants us all to call her Justine Miliband, just so there's no confusion.

Read The Mole’s article in full

Cameron doomed on current poll figures

Posted at 09.30, Wed 11 March 2015

With the main parties’ leads in the opinion polls changing from day to day, it’s the average that counts – and, on average, the Tories are just ahead, Don Brind writes.

But they’re nowhere near enough ahead to be in a position to form a stable government - and unless things change radically in the eight weeks left before the election, David Cameron will either have to try running a minority government or quit Number Ten.

Analysis shows that adding together the (projected) seats won by the Tories and the Lib Dems would not be enough to form a majority coalition, nor would adding in Ukip (if anyone would agree to it). But add Labour to the SNP and throw in the Lib Dems and you get a coalition with a majority.

Read Don Brind's column in full

What Labour can learn from the Scots Nats

Posted at 09.30, Wed 11 March 2015

The Labour party needs to learn from the Scottish Nationalists and try to generate in the English “the same visceral loyalty to nationhood that has galvanised Scottish politics”, says Mary Riddell in the Daily Telegraph.

“The Left’s inability to rise to this challenge stems partly from its cultural confusion,” says Riddell. “The Conservatives are the self-appointed curators of a nation supposedly presided over by a Tory monarchy and a Tory God. Mr Cameron’s party has long claimed squatters’ rights on an England of cricket teas, Henley Regatta, fox-hunting and Elgar.

“Labour, lacking such cultural touchstones, has struggled to weave its radical traditions into a story that connects Shakespeare and William Blake to the social blight of a modern Albion.”

If the Union is to survive, Scotland will need more power at Westminster – and so will England. “Whichever federal fudge the next prime minister settles upon will matter less than implanting a vision of English nationhood beguiling enough to shore up the Union.”

Read Mary Riddell’s Telegraph article in full

Labour candidates reject Blair's £1,000 gifts

Posted at 09.57, Tues 10 March 2015

Tony Blair’s former spin doctor Alastair Campbell has attacked as “attention-seeking” three Labour candidates who have turned down a £1,000 donation from the former Labour PM to their campaign funds, The Times reports.

Sophy Gardner, Labour’s candidate for Conservative-held Gloucester, said it would be “hypocritical” for her to accept the gift because she was against Britain entering the Iraq war under Blair’s leadership.

Sally Keeble, standing in the Tory marginal seat of Northampton North, said she didn’t want her campaign funded by money that might have come “from a number of international sources, some of which were ones that personally I don’t agree with, and I don’t find acceptable”.

Lesley Brennan, Labour’s candidate in Dundee East, had already announced at the weekend that she was going to hand back the money after consulting with her local party.

Alastair Campbell tweeted: “To attention-seeking Labour candidate rejecting TB money 1. He won more Labour seats than anyone 2. Tories are loaded 3. Do you want to win?”

Read The Times report in full

Two polls give Tories a four-point lead

Posted at 09.50, Tues 10 March 2015

Will two new polls from YouGov and Populus giving the Conservatives a four-point lead over Labour be enough to relieve tensions in the Cabinet, asks Don Brind.

There is said to be growing alarm among senior Tories that the “economy, economy, economy” strategy laid out by Aussie Lynton Crosby is not giving the party the lead they had hoped for, given the generally bright economic news.

So, a four-point lead – if it doesn't turn out to be a blip – is likely to calm nerves. But there’s a long, long way to go to the nine-point lead the Tories need in the polls if they are to win a Commons majority.

Read Don Brind’s column in full

Osborne finds Budget ‘breathing space’

Posted at 09.50, Tues 10 March 2015

Was Ed Balls ‘crying wolf’ with yesterday’s warning that Britain faces “extreme” spending cuts if the Tories are returned to power, The Mole asked.

To which the answer appears to be Yes, according to a Financial Times report which says that “lower inflation and reasonable tax receipts have improved the medium-term outlook for the public finances”, giving George Osborne “breathing space” in his 18 March Budget to relax his spending/austerity assumption.

In the Autumn Statement, Osborne foresaw public spending beyond 2015-16 having to fall to 35.2 per cent of national income to allow him to build up a projected £23bn surplus in the public finances by 2019-20.

But the FT says the brighter economic stats mean that that surplus could be more like £30bn, allowing Osborne wiggle room. Departmental spending might not need to be as severe as predicted, and/or it could fund tax cuts.

Read the Financial Times article in full

Kensington runners: not a celeb in sight

Posted at 09.50, Tues 10 March 2015

Whatever became of all those celebs expected to be chosen for the plum Tory seat of Kensington? James Cracknell, Dan Snow and Sol Campbell were among the names mooted when Sir Malcolm Rifkind announced his decision to stand down last month.

Now, with the Kensington Conservative Association set to choose a shortlist of six today, the exercise is suddenly a lot more serious, according to James Forsyth in the Mail.

Victoria Borwick, one of Boris Johnson's deputy mayors, who has been “working the association assiduously for years in the hope that the seat might come up”, is one front-runner. Laura Trott, one of Cameron's policy advisers and architect of the Tories' tax-free childcare policy, is another.

The dark horse, says Forsyth, is Simone Finn, special adviser to Minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude, who’s made a name for herself as a crusader for reform and efficiency in government. “Whoever is selected for this plum seat will be headed for the political premier league,” Forsyth concludes.

Read James Forsyth’s article in full

59 days to go, and there's nothing in it

Posted at 11.11, Mon 9 March 2015

Two polls in the Sunday papers show almost identical results: one has a Tory lead of one percentage point over Labour, the other has a tie.

YouGov in the Sunday Times shows voting intentions unchanged from their Friday survey for The Sun: Con 34, Lab 33, Lib Dems 8, Ukip 15, Greens 5.

In The Observer’s Opinium survey, Labour dip one point to allow the Tories to draw level. Con 34, Lab 34, Lib Dems 8, Ukip 14, Greens 7.

With 59 days to go, and neither party managing to pull ahead, it’s little wonder, Don Brind writes, that the Tories are apparently pinning their hopes on a tax giveaway Budget, and that scare stories of a Labour-SNP pact are gaining ground.

Balls warns of ‘extreme’ cuts under Tories

Posted at 11.00, Mon 9 March 2015

Worried that George Osborne will unveil a populist giveaway Budget on 18 March, shadow chancellor Ed Balls is “getting his retaliation in early”, The Mole writes.

Balls is launching a dossier today that claims that if the Tories are returned to power they will demand some of the most “extreme” spending cuts in recent history. It will mean “a bigger fall in spending as a share of GDP in any four-year period since demobilisation at the end of the Second World War”.

But is Balls crying wolf? It wouldn't be the first time...

Read The Mole’s column in full

Ed Miliband: The Guardian interview

Posted at 11.00, Mon 9 March 2015

A mega-interview with Ed Miliband, conducted by Simon Hattenstone for The Guardian, reveals that the Labour leader is obsessed with snooker, loves Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, and found the split with his brother David far more painful than he had expected.

As for that bacon sandwich gaffe, was it just a matter of his being forced to do something unnatural for the cameras? “No! I like bacon effing sarnies. I think eating one on camera was clearly a mistake.”

Ten things we’ve just learned about Ed Miliband

Labour-SNP pact? Just say No, Ed

Posted at 11.00, Mon 9 March 2015

A new Conservative Party campaign poster showing Ed Miliband living in Alex Salmond’s top pocket has been released as pressure mounts on the Labour leader to rule out a coalition with the Scottish Nationalists, Jack Bremer writes.

Some fear that any pact between Labour and the SNP could lead to a constitutional crisis: former Tory Cabinet member Kenneth Baker thinks it would better for the United Kingdom if Labour and the Conservatives were to enter into a ‘grand coalition’, even if the parties might hate the idea.

Read Jack Bremer’s article in full

Major urges Labour to rule out SNP pact

Posted at 09.57, Fri 6 March 2015

Former Tory Prime Minister Sir John Major has called on Ed Miliband to “summon the courage” and formally rule out a Labour-SNP coalition. The Scottish Nationalists, he said, “would enter into any agreement with Labour with one overriding aim: to break up the United Kingdom”.

Major made his plea to the Labour leader in an article for the Daily Telegraph. The paper says he was speaking out as “an Englishman with a profound admiration and respect for Scotland”.

Max Hastings, writing in the Daily Mail, is equally anxious about a Labour-SNP pact, saying Britain faces “the bleak prospect of five million Scots determining the fate of almost 60 million people in the rest of the UK”.

These warnings come as polling analysis shows that a combination of Labour and SNP seats is about the only one that could achieve a working majority in the Commons.

The Lib Dems are expected to lose at least half their seats, making a second Tory-Lib Dem coalition impossible. Despite their rising popularity, Britain’s first-past-the-post system means neither Ukip nor the Greens are expected to win more than one or two seats – while SNP could win as many as 56.

Read John Major’s Daily Telegraph article in full

Read Max Hastings’s Daily Mail article in full

Labour take four-point lead over Tories

Posted at 09.45, Fri 6 March 2015

Labour are back in the lead by four points, according to YouGov's latest voting intention poll, at the end of a week in which the Tories had been pulling ahead, Don Brind writes. So, with 62 days to go, it’s still basically neck-and-neck.

A London poll gives Ed Miliband more cheer: the weekly Evening Standard survey puts Labour 12 percentage points ahead of the Tories – their biggest lead in the capital since May 2014.

Read Don Brind’s column in full

Cameron ‘frit’: what the papers say

Posted at 09.45, Fri 6 March 2015

Press reaction to David Cameron’s refusal to face Ed Miliband in a head-to-head TV debate is unanimous on one point: whether the impasse is the fault of the broadcasters or of Number Ten, the PM is desperate to avoid an occasion that could help the Labour leader improve his public image.

Even The Times calls the PM “frit” in an editorial which argues that, by ducking the debate, Cameron has scored “a straightforward electoral own goal that even Mr Miliband can’t miss”. Janet Daley in the Daily Telegraph is harsher: she believes Cameron’s refusal to face Miliband “will not be forgotten”.

Read our round-up of press reaction here