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

UK 'no country for young men', says FT

Posted at 11.14, Tues 24 Feb 2015

As David Cameron continues to woo the grey vote – insisting yesterday that the winter fuel allowance and free bus passes should not be means-tested – the Financial Times has issued a report showing just how living standards have slipped for the 20something generation and risen for 65 to 70-year-olds.

“Britain’s young adults, who for much of the 20th century enjoyed living standards well above average, have been displaced by the rise of the comfortably-off pensioner in the most dramatic generational change in decades,” the paper reports.

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Using historic income data from more than 800,000 households, the FT has discovered that a general slide in younger people’s incomes accelerated because of the recession. And it’s unlikely to get any better: the ability to buy a house and then profit from its rising value has helped the elder generation – while the 20somethings are having trouble just getting on the housing ladder.

The Times is also looking at disaffected young voters today – through the eyes of 28-year-old Georgia Gould, who has been interviewing her peers for a book, Wasted: How Misunderstanding Young Britain Threatens Our Future.

Young people face a perfect economic storm of unaffordable housing, zero-hours contracts, trebled tuition fees, stalled social mobility and global uncertainty, says The Times.

Rifkind stands down as Kensington MP

Posted at 11.00, Tues 24 Feb 2015

Sir Malcolm Rifkind this morning stood down as chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee and as Conservative MP for Kensington in the wake of the Daily Telegraph/Channel 4 Dispatches sting operation that showed both Rifkind and Labour's Jack Straw being prepared to take 'cash for access' from a bogus Chinese company.

This won't be the first time a Tory member for Kensington has left under a cloud, The Mole writes. Previous incumbents include Nick Scott, found drunk in a gutter at Tory conference, the serial womaniser Alan Clark and, most recently, Michael Portillo, who quit politics after being denied the Tory leadership.

Boris Johnson would have liked the seat - Rifkind refused to give it up - but was perhaps lucky to escape the jinx.

Read The Mole's column in full

Straw-Rifkind: stop the sadism

Posted at 11.00, Tues 24 Feb 2015

Parliamentary lobbying scandals are the gift that keep on giving because nobody will address the twin underlying problems that cause them, argues Douglas Murray at The Spectator – namely, that British MPs have too little to do and are not paid enough.

The workload issue is “the guilty secret of Westminster politics”, says Murray. “Almost no meaningful legislation gets discussed in the House because what used to be the business of the House is now largely dealt with by Brussels above or by devolved assemblies and local government below.”

As for MPs’ salaries – currently £67,500 a year – although they are far better paid than most of the population, “they do not lead financially enviable lives. They are paid about as well as a first-year solicitor in London and on that most of them have to run two homes – one in London, and another in their constituency.”

There is something sadistic about the present public attitude towards our MPs, Murray concludes. “We keep exalting in the humiliation of people for personal failure in a system we refuse to accept is sick and refuse to make well.”

Read Douglas Murray’s article in full

Ashcroft poll gives Labour four-point lead

Posted at 11.00, Tues 24 Feb 2015

The latest Ashcroft National Poll puts Labour on 36 per cent, four points ahead of the Tories. It’s their best showing since last summer, writes Don Brind. But before Team Miliband get carried away, ComRes is giving the Tories a two–point lead over Labour – their best showing in a ComRes poll since 2010.

What’s more significant perhaps is the regional breakdown Ashcroft offers: it shows that in England Labour have turned around an 11-point deficit in 2010 and now lead the Tories by six points. If this were reflected in actual voting on 7 May, Miliband could expect to win a Commons majority even if his party suffers a wipeout – as predicted - in Scotland.

Read Don Brind’s column in full

Cameron disowns MP’s line on maternity leave

Posted at 11.00, Tues 24 Feb 2015

David Cameron has kept his “new man” credentials in shape by “distancing himself” from comments made by Tory MP Andrew Rosindell about a senior Labour politician’s plan to take maternity leave immediately after the general election, The Guardian reports.

Rachel Reeves is expected to become work and pensions secretary – the job currently held by the Tories’ Iain Duncan Smith – if Labour win the general election. She told the Daily Telegraph: “My baby’s due in June, and I want to cancel the bedroom tax before I go on maternity leave. That would be a great start for when I come back in September.”

Rosindell, Tory MP for Romford, told the Daily Mail: “I don’t want to say someone who is having a baby is not eligible to be a cabinet minister, but I certainly think perhaps the demands of that particular job will require someone to give it their full attention.

Asked if there was anything to stop an expectant mother from becoming a cabinet minister, a spokesman for David Cameron said: “Why on earth not?”

Lord Prescott is back - but why?

Posted at 11.18, Mon 23 Feb 2015

Welcome back, Prezza! Ed Miliband has appointed Lord Prescott, hard-hitting deputy PM in the Blair years, as his personal adviser with specific responsibility for climate change.

Ostensibly, the idea is that Prescott will “bash heads together” and help force world leaders to accept “a more ambitious agenda” over carbon emissions when they meet in Paris later this year (by which time, of course, Ed Miliband hopes that he, too, will be a world leader).

But as The Observer reported yesterday, the appointment “will inevitably be seen as a way to shore up Labour’s traditional working-class vote and address growing concerns that Miliband and the shadow cabinet are failing to cut through to the electorate”.

Evidence for that lack of “cut through” comes in an Opinium poll which has the Conservatives opening up a two-point lead over Labour – the first time Opinium has given the Tories the advantage since March 2012. Con 35% (up 2), Lab 33% (down 2), Ukip 15%, Greens 7%, Lib Dems 6%.

Dan Hodges at the Daily Telegraph is not convinced Prescott will win back a single Green or Ukip voter. He sees the appointment as “another example of Miliband’s obsession with hammering round pegs into square holes. Faced with a choice of appealing to liberal environmentalists and traditional working-class Labourites, Miliband – characteristically – has tried to do both."

‘Stop whingeing about attack ads’ – Hague

Posted at 11.10, Mon 23 Feb 2015

Conservatives are entitled to say whatever they like about Labour, says William Hague, and those who don’t appreciate the “attack ads” against Ed Miliband running on YouTube should stop “whingeing” about them.

Hague told the Andrew Marr Show: "When I was leader of the opposition I remember some incredibly negative campaigning. Let's not have any whinging now from anybody else about anything like that. If we think there are major weaknesses in other parties we are entitled to point them out.”

Some of the whingeing has come from his own party: both Theresa May and Esther McVey have complained about the ads. In yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph, Janet Daley called them “cruel, flippant and unfunny”.

Read Janet Daley’s column in full

Straw-Rifkind: Ed wants second salary ban

Posated at 11.10, Mon 23 Feb 2015

The Straw-Rifkind cash-for-access revelations will doubtless appal many voters, writes The Mole. The fact that two such respected elder statesmen - they both served as Foreign Secretary - were caught in this latest sting might well prove a boost for the "outsider" parties, Ukip and the Greens.

But Ed Miliband sees it as a chance to make political capital - by proposing again his idea that MPs be banned from earning second salaries, beyond a limit set at ten per cent of their parliamentary salary. Will it fly? Or is just too late for a disillusioned electorate?

Read The Mole's column in full

Not so fast, Mr Shapps!

Posted at 11.10, Mon 23 Feb 2015

Tory party chairman Grant Shapps has told the Sunday Times that all his party has to do to gain majority power on 7 May is win over a total of 11,000 voters who supported either Labour or the Lib Dems in 23 marginal seats in 2010.

Simple. Or stupid? Shapps's logic takes no account of the swing to Labour since 2010 that shows up in all the national polls, writes Don Brind.

Just one example: Labour took Hampstead and Kilburn by the slenderest margin of 0.1 per cent at the last election: recent polling has the Labour candidate, Tulip Siddiq, 17 percentage points ahead of her Tory challenger.

Read Don Brind's article in full

Poll shows big Tory lead vanishing again

Posted at 10.09, Fri 20 Feb 2015

A week which began for poll-watchers with Manic Monday - when ICM showed the Tories jumping six per cent and Ashcroft had them diving four per cent - has ended with a much more familiar picture: a one-point Labour lead, writes Don Brind.

The latest YouGov poll has: Lab 33%, Con 32%, Lib Dems 9%, Ukip 15%, Greens 6%. This is bang in line with the polling average on the New Statesman’s election website May2015 which has Labour ahead by just over one per cent.

If this turns out to be the result on 7 May, Labour will be the biggest party but will fall well short of an overall majority.

So, those Monday polls look more than ever like being “outliers” – polling parlance for a blip. Anthony Wells of UK Polling Report offers a useful explanation of how “outliers” come to be: some are the logical result of random sampling which is at the heart of opinion polling and some come when a particular poll seems to have an inbuilt bias.

Yet Tory-backing punters keep coming

Posted at 10.00, Fri 20 Feb 2015

Nothing – certainly not the polls - puts off those super-confident Conservatives convinced David Cameron will win on 7 May. Now, after yet more support from punters for a Tory win, the bookmakers William Hill have cut their odds for the Conservatives to be the largest single party on 8 May from 4/6 to 8/13.

One West Country-based William Hill customer has staked £56,000 on the Tories winning most seats, and stands to collect £110,000 as a result.

A Kent-based citizen – name of Nigel Farage – also foresees a Conservative victory. The Ukip leader tells the Daily Telegraph he believes the Tories will be the biggest party on 8 May because David Cameron looks like a “leader” and connects with middle-class Tories whereas Ed Miliband is “not connecting” with traditional Labour voters.

Nigel Farage and the Chelsea fan

Posted at 10.00, Fri 20 Feb 2015

Just what Nigel Farage didn’t need on the day an Ashcroft poll showed Ukip doing less well in Tory marginals than expected …

One of the young Chelsea supporters spotted in the group who prevented a black Frenchman getting on the Paris Metro, and then broke into chants of “We're racist and that's the way we like it”, turns out to be a Ukip-supporting ex-public school boy who was once photographed with Farage outside a London pub, pints in hand…

His name is Josh Parsons and he attended Millfield School, where - the Daily Mail reminds us - fees are £30,000 a year. Parsons is understood to live with his granny in a £1.5m six-bedroom home in Surrey, but there was no answer when the paper called.

A spokesman for Farage insisted: “Mr Farage is photographed with and by dozens of people, both by supporters and opponents on a daily basis. Ukip and Mr Farage find the behaviour of the suspected Chelsea fans on the Paris Metro to be disgraceful, and shames both the country and Chelsea Football Club.”

Parson’s boss at London’s Business and Commercial Finance Club, Miranda Khadr, said: “He is a 21-year-old little boy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Ed Miliband meets ‘Joe the Plumber’

Posted at 10.00, Fri 20 Feb 2015

Remember Joe the Plumber, who famously gave Senator Barack Obama a hard time when the future president made a campaign stop in Ohio in 2008? Ed Miliband met his ‘Joe’ yesterday in the shape of Peter Baldwin, an electrician at BAe Systems in Lancashire.

Face to face with the Labour leader, right in front of a BBC TV camera, Peter Baldwin said: “At this moment in time I don’t feel like voting Labour.” All his colleagues, he said, were “leaning” towards Ukip. “The question on everybody’s mind is the referendum," he wwent on, while Miliband looked back stony-faced. "I know what you’re going to say, but the working-class man in here wants to have a say.”

Miliband did his best to commiserate with Peter while avoiding the referendum question. “I think we can actually get low-skilled immigration down - if we clamp down on benefits…” Realising he was sounding more like Nigel Farage than he might have wished, Miliband suddenly brought the encounter to an abrupt end: “Anyway, VERY nice to meet you,” he said - and turned away.

See a clip of Ed meeting Peter here

Students with no intention of voting

Posted at 10.00, Fri 20 Feb 2015

Radio 4's Today programme this morning visited Wolverhampton South West, one the marginals where the student vote is suppiosed to be crucial: there are 20,000 students living in the Tory-held constituency and they could swing the result.

But, Nigel Horne writes, not one of the students approached by the BBC's reporter had any intention of voting. And the only issue they seemed to care about was tuition fees. Whatever became of youthful idealism?

Read Nigel Horne's article in full

Get ready for 'chaos' on 8 May

Posted at 10.20, Thurs 19 Feb 2015

Be prepared for chaos on 8 May. Unless the polls change dramatically in the coming weeks, we are heading for “a fragmented, unpredictable parliament unlike any other in our history”, warns The Times columnist Jenni Russell.

That’s because the three main parties have been haemorrhaging support. In 2010 they took between them 90 per cent of the votes; today they’re polling close to 70 per cent. “Just in order to scrape a bare majority, the next government is going to have to make deals not just with one other party but quite possibly with two or even more,” says Russell.

And a government entirely dependent on minority partners will not only be held hostage on individual votes, it will be vulnerable to its own rebels too. Russell quotes a Tory strategist telling her: “We’re heading for real administrative and political chaos.”

Read Jenni Russell’s article in full

'Curse of Clegg' strikes again

Posted at 10.15, Thurs 19 Feb 2015

Nick Clegg is getting the blame for soaring childcare costs - because his plan to reward low-income families with free nursery care has left middle-income earners picking up the bill. As a result, The Mole writes, the average cost of childcare in Britain has risen to £6,000 a year - and it's all Clegg's fault.

A report on this surge in costs from the Family and Childcare Trust (FCT) comes as Clegg is due to make a speech promising yet more free childcare. What should be a vote winner could end up a vote loser for the Lib Dems.

Read The Mole's column in full

Can they drown Ukip with silence?

Posted at 10.15, Thurs 19 Feb 2015

Ukip remains a threat to both the Conservatives and Labour in certain marginal seats - but both parties think they have the solution: to drown the Faragists with silence.

As a result, Ukip are no longer surging, but are stagnant in the polls, Don Brind writes. Today's YouGov poll, for instance, has them on 14 per cent - way behind the 20 per cent target which would give them eight or so seats.

The same YouGov poll has Labour on 34 per cent, two points ahead of the Tories on 32. In short, given the margin of error, it’s still neck-and-neck - and every potential defector to Ukip has to be taken seriously.

Read Don Brind's column in full

The Good Right - good timing for a good idea?

Posted at 10.15, Thurs 19 Feb 2015

In the week that two senior Tories have denounced the party's 'attack ads' against Ed Miliband, and when Iain Duncan Smith has dismissed the Church of England as "irrelevant" for raising questions about society's direction, Tim Montgomerie and Stephan Shakespeare have launched The Good Right – a bold agenda for a more compassionate Conservatism.

Good timing, writes Nigel Horne, but will it catch on? Their proposals includes above-inflation increases in the minimum wage to encourage employers to invest in a more highly skilled workforce and a rule that all private schools be forced by law to accept 25 per cent of their intake as scholarship boys and girls.

Read Nigel Horne's column in full