Mail gives PM a morning-after spanking
Posted at 09.10, Tues 10 Feb 2015
The Daily Mail has launched a stinging attack on David Cameron this morning. Surely, asks an editorial, as a PR man he can see that last night’s fund-raising Black and White Ball – with its “secret guest list of bankers, hedge fund managers and dodgy tycoons” – undermines his party’s message that we’re “all in it together”?
Events like this, the Mail thunders, “leave an impression of a pampered political elite, courting the mega-rich as they drift ever further out of touch with voters’ real-life struggles”.
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It could explain why the Tories are making no headway in the polls, the paper says. Able to boast steady growth and falling unemployment, and with only the “useless” Ed Miliband “looking less like a PM-in–waiting every day” to contend with, the Tories ought to be doing so much better.
But where is the Big Idea to fire the public’s imagination? Referring to Cameron’s call to business leaders to hand out pay rises, the Mail concludes: “It’s all very well for Mr Cameron to plead with prospering firms to be more generous with employees. But how about a passionate commitment to give every worker a pay rise – by cutting taxes?”
Read The Mole on last night’s Ball
Three new polls show Tory vote rising
Posted at 09.00, Tues 10 Feb 2015
The weekly Ashcroft National Poll shows the Conservatives pulling ahead of Labour by three points: Con 34 (up 3), Lab 31 (unchanged), Lib Dems 9 (up 1), Ukip 14 (down 1), Greens 6 (down 3), SNP 4 (u/c).
As Lord Ashcroft – quite properly - reminds us, this should be seen within the context of recent Ashcroft polls and other surveys by other companies. There’s no need to get excited: given the margin of error, Labour and the Tories are basically still neck-and-neck.
On the other hand, writes Nigel Horne, there is a pattern emerging this week - because two other new polls, from YouGov and Populus, both show the Tory vote rising too while Ukip and the Greens are falling. Is this the point – with 86 days to go - at which the protest parties begin to slide as voters see it’s really a choice between Cameron and Miliband?
Read Nigel Horne's column in full
SNP share up – but ray of hope for Labour
Posted at 09.00, Tues 10 Feb 2015
The SNP is on course to double its vote on 7 May according to a new voting intention poll – though its lead over Labour appears to have diminished from a stunning 20 points in several recent surveys to a more sober ten points.
The TNS poll puts the Scottish Nationalists on 41 per cent against Scottish Labour on 31 per cent. If this were to be reflected in the actual election, Labour would lose about half its 41 seats north of the border – as opposed to virtually all of them, which was what earlier polls suggested.
The Guardian adds the caveat that TNS is regarded as more cautious than other pollsters.
Tom Costley, head of TNS Scotland, says the Lib Dems are suffering too as the SNP surges: Clegg’s party is down from 19 per cent at the 2010 election to four per cent. They’re unlikely to hold on to many of their 11 Scottish seats.
Read The Guardian article in full
Miliband vs Boots: was there a winner?
Posted at 09.00, Tues 10 Jan 2015
How did the electorate feel about the Miliband vs Boots row? One week on, we have two takes on the issue – from pollsters Peter Kellner, president of YouGov, and Lord Ashcroft.
YouGov research has found a widespread desire among voters that government should “stand up” to big business. Yet the party that promises to do just that – Labour - is seen as lagging behind the Conservatives when it comes to pro-business policies, Kellner argues in the Daily Telegraph.
Labour politicians keep reminding us that they - unlike the Tories - are promising to keep Britain in Europe, says Kellner, but in elections, perceptions matter more than reality. "Seldom has there been a more savage demonstration of that old truth."
Lord Ashcroft’s verdict – based on the results of two focus groups – is that Labour vs Boots ended in a "score draw".
As a major employer in the UK, participants felt Boots boss Stefano Pessina “probably” had reason to say that a Labour government would be a “catastrophe”; for some it was “a bit of a concern if this [attacking his tax exile status] is the best response Labour can come up with. It’s not really answering the point he made.”
However, says Ashcroft, “for others their indignation over the tax question invalidated his other points, and some went as far as to say it had done more to put them off Boots than Labour”.
Capitalism helps cure cancer - Boris
Posted at 10.52, Mon 9 Feb 2015
It’s not just Labour’s threat to raise income tax or impose a mansion tax that upsets Britain’s businessmen – it’s the party’s “intellectual failure to grasp that the profit motive can be good,” argues Boris Johnson in his Daily Telegraph column this morning.
Capitalism, he says, is essential if we are to meet the biggest challenges facing the human race. Pointing to British scientists who are “in the lead” in the race to beat cancer using T-cells, he argues: “You need venture capital to cure cancer; you need people who are willing to wager huge stakes on the success of these therapies.
“And I am afraid those investors will always be fired not just by a desire to better the world, but by a good old-fashioned profit motive – and the last thing we need is a Labour government that fundamentally hates the idea of profit.”
Read Boris Johnson’s column in full
Bill Somebody has something to say
Posted at 10.50, Mon 9 Feb 2015
‘Bill Somebody’ - aka Bill Thomas, the Labour-supporting former EDS and Hewlett Packard executive whose name the shadow chancellor Ed Balls simply couldn’t remember on Newsnight last week - did not take offence and still thinks the two Eds are the men to lead Britain.
“We do need to balance the deficit but as well as tight spending control we need a growing economy with high quality jobs rooted in competitive firms,” he wrote in an article for the Sunday Mirror. “I happen to personally believe that our best chance of achieving this is inside Europe and it is Labour who are brave enough to say that Britain should stay in the EU.”
Thomas also likes Labour’s plans to improve apprenticeships. “I think Ed Miliband’s goal of as many school leavers choosing apprenticeships as going to university will strike the right balance for the economy. It is good for our young people, good for business and good for Britain.”
Read Bill Thomas’s article in full
Labour ahead despite business knocks
Posted at 10.50, Mon 9 Feb 2015
Labour has extended its narrow lead over the Tories to two percentage points, according to a new Opinium poll for The Observer. Labour is on 34 per cent against the Conservatives’ 32 per cent. Ukip have dropped three to 15 per cent. The Greens and the Lib Dems have each gained two (up to eight and seven per cent).
David Cameron maintains his lead over Ed Miliband in the personal approval chart, scoring minus 5 to the Labour leader’s minus 26.
But Team Miliband will be pleased to have “contained” the headline issue of its relations with Big Business. It will also have been relieved to hear that a rather negative Ashcroft poll conducted among Miliband’s constituents in Doncaster North turns out to have been based on faulty data.
As Don Brind reported yesterday, the original poll, carried out in mid-November, put Miliband ahead of his Ukip challenger by only 12 points - a miserable showing given his sizeable majority at the 2010 election. The revised poll, however, puts Miliband a clear 30 points ahead.
Read Don Brind’s column in full
Labour and Tories both bung the bribes
Posted at 10.50, Mon 9 Feb 2015
Both the Conservatives and Labour are under fire this morning for electoral bribery: the Tories are extending the pensioner savings bonds, hugely attractive to over-65s who are more likely to vote Conservative (if they can be persuaded not to desert to Ukip), while Ed Miliband is promising extra paternity leave for young dads, who, research shows, are more likely to vote Labour (if they can be persuaded not to vote Green).
It’s blatant politicking, The Mole writes, and it’s making both parties enemies. The Tories are accused of expensive favouritism to a sector that doesn’t need any more help; Labour are accused of making life more difficult for small business who will have to deal with the upshot of new fathers going missing for a month.
Read The Mole’s column in full
Should Ed refuse Toxic Tony's offer?
Posted at 10.50, Mon 9 Feb 2015
Tony Blair says he will do "whatever the party wants" to help Ed Miliband win the general election. But would the Labour leader be wise to keep his predecessor at arm's length? asks Nigel Horne.
If the Mail on Sunday is correct, the Chilcot Report will issue a "devastating" verdict on Blair's willingness to join the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Why would Miliband want to risk his campaign being tainted by association?
Furthermore, Blair's effort to help Gordon Brown win the 2010 election was embarrassing: having no faith in his successor, Blair's heart was clearly not in it. This might be an offer Miliband can afford to refuse.
Read Nigel Horne's column in full
English alone ‘should not be able to quit EU’
Posted at 10.50, Mon 9 Feb 2015
The leader of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party, has joined SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon in demanding that Britain must only be allowed to leave Europe if each individual country votes by a majority to leave.
Leanne Wood told Sky News yesterday: “My position is that the votes in each of the countries should be added up separately and we should only pull out of the EU if all four countries want to do that.”
Even if the electorate in England – which is by far the largest of the four by population – were to vote by a majority to quit, England should not be allowed to do so if any of the other three countries voted to stay in.
Meanwhile David Cameron has quashed a Sunday Times report that Number Ten is keen to pull forward the referendum to 2016. The PM told the Mail Online he needs all the time to “renegotiate a better deal for Britain”.
Tax avoidance: Miliband 'won't back down'
Posted at 23.00, Sun 8 Feb 2015
Ed Miliband says he is “not going to back down” over tax avoidance following his very public row with Boots boss Stefano Pessina. “The time has finally come to put an end to a society in which one group of people can play by different rules to the rest,” the Labour leader says in an interview with The Guardian.
“There is nothing pro-business about defending tax avoidance. Millions of British people and businesses pay their taxes and they are damaged by this behaviour.”
Miliband says that if Labour can win the election, his government will give six months to Bermuda and other tax havens “to agree to publish a register of beneficial ownership”. If they refuse to do so, Britain will recommend to the OECD that they are put on an international blacklist.
Miliband is also the subject of a Financial Times profile which reveals that two New Labour “grandees” - Lord Mandelson and Alastair Campbell - asked former Labour home secretary Alan Johnson last November whether it was true he was considering a request by some Labour MPs to stand against Miliband. “Alan gave an emphatic No.”
The FT describes a meeting between Miliband and college students in Belfast. “He looks relaxed. He is self-deprecating and engaging, unrecognisable from the wooden, supposedly hapless and electorally toxic figure portrayed by his critics.”
TV debates to resemble Just a Minute
Posted at 09.25, Fri 6 feb 2015
The multi-party televised leader debates could end up resembling Radio 4’s Just a Minute, writes Nigel Horne. With seven leaders taking part, there will be time for only four or five questions and each leader will get only a minute to respond. No time for deviation or repetition – perhaps Nicholas Parsons should be brought in as moderator?
The Evening Standard reports that the seven leaders – Cameron, Miliband, Clegg, Farage, Sturgeon, Natalie Bennett (Greens) and Leanne Wood (Plaid Cymru) – will draw lots to decide who stands where on the stage and “a firm of opinion pollsters will be called in to assemble a balanced audience of ‘politically interested’ people".
That’s assuming Cameron agrees to take part: he still hasn’t decided, and BBC and ITV have yet to meet his most recent demand (or excuse, as the others would put it) that the debates be brought forward from April to March. If the stalemate isn’t resolved, Cameron could be ‘empty-chaired’ – giving each of the other six an extra ten seconds to speak.
Read the Evening Standard report in full
Cleggless Lab-Lib Dem pact ‘could work’
Posted at 10.45, Fri 6 Feb 2015
A coalition of Labour and the Lib Dems is a "realistic" prospect because there's enough common ground between the two parties, according to a joint think tank report, writes Don Brind as another poll points to Labour emerging the largest party in a hung parliament.
But the political objections from some within Labour and especially from the party's biggest donor, Unite boss Len McCluskey, are formidable.
However, one unpalatable stumbling block might be easily removed - and that's Nick Clegg. Many senior Lib Dems expect him to stand down voluntarily if he cannot continue as deputy PM in coalition with Cameron's Tories. That's if the voters of Sheffield Hallam don't oust him first.
Read Don Brind's column in full
Tories’ NHS reform ‘damaging and distracting’
Posted at 09.20, Fri 6 Feb 2015
The coalition’s shake-up of the NHS was destabilising, damaging and distracting and wasted millions of pounds, according to a devastating critique released by the respected healthcare think tank, the King’s Fund.
The changes pushed through by the former Tory Health Secretary Andrew Lansley in the early days of this government only increased the problems facing A&E units and left the service structurally “incomprehensible”.
As the BBC reports today, Lansley doesn’t get all the blame: David Cameron is accused of dismantling expertise built up by Blair and Brown and allowing Lansley too much freedom to press ahead with his “sweeping and complicated” bid to shift the balance of power to GPs.
“Historians will not be kind in their assessment of the coalition government’s record on NHS reform,” said the King’s Fund’s chief executive, Prof Chris Ham.
The Labour Party does not escape criticisim – it is accused of “crying wolf” by exaggerating the risks of “privatisation” – but Team Miliband will not be disappointed to see the NHS back in the headlines, with most polls showing it’s the electorate’s number one concern.
Read The Week's report here
Nick Clegg and the affair of the C4 interview
Posted at 09.20, Fri 6 Feb 2015
There are still 90 days to go – but will anyone better C4 News presenter Jackie Long when it comes to getting under a senior (male) politician’s skin?
Nick Clegg was well into his “If it wasn’t for the Lib Dems, life under this government would have been grim” schtick yesterday when Long suddenly went for the jugular:
Long: “Isn’t the difficulty that people just don’t believe you? You are defined by your broken promise on tuition fees - ”
Clegg: “On tuition fees, as you know, it was the fairest deal I could get… We’ve now achieved – "
Long: “But it was a broken promise!”
Clegg: “Look, I’m not the prime minister, so clearly… People can, if you want, criticise me for the one thing I wasn’t able to deliver – or the hundreds of things – the pupil premium, the better childcare, more apprenticeships -”
Long: “But that’s a bit like a man who has an affair and then says to his wife, ‘Look at what I’m doing for you now, I’m putting the bins out, taking the kids to school’… It’s the broken trust that can’t be – “
Clegg: “That’s an ABSURD thing to say!!!!!!”
See a clip of the C4 News interview here
Stop personal attacks on Ed, says Gove
Posted at 09.20, Fri 6 Feb 2015
Michael Gove says fellow Tories should stop launching “unfair” personal attacks on Ed Miliband which could backfire with voters. “I know that Ed Miliband is (a) an intelligent person and (b) a sincere and thoughtful person. I also know in his personal dealings, he is decent, honourable and truthful,” Gove told listeners to LBC Radio yesterday.
The Labour high command - not to mention his own colleagues - will be flabbergasted by Gove’s honesty, writes The Mole. But does the former Education Secretary have his own axe to grind about personal attacks?
The BBC’s Iain Watson says “friends of Gove” blame election guru Lynton Crosby for helping to engineer Gove’s removal from the Department of Education when his personal ratings showed him to be “toxic” with the school-run mums.
Read The Mole’s column in full
Catching tax avoiders? Get Margaret Hodge!
Posted at 09.20, Fri 6 Feb 2015
There’s nothing anti-business or "lefty" about Labour making tax avoiders pay up, writes Polly Toynbee in The Guardian following Ed Miliband’s run-in with Boots boss Stefano Pessina. “When I recently asked Michael Heseltine what he’d do about the avoiders he was unequivocal: ‘Go after them! How many gunboats have Amazon got?’”
What Labour should do is set up a new Office of Tax Responsibility to oversee the Revenue’s pursuit of tax, says Toynbee. And there’s a perfect candidate available to head it – that “grand inquisitor” Margaret Hodge.
Hodge’s years in charge of the cross-party Commons public accounts committee mean “she knows where the tax is hiding – and where public spending is wasted… Labour (like the Tories) isn’t over-blessed with politicians who command trust, let alone public admiration, but she is one, and Eds Miliband and Balls should use her to chase avoiders.”
Read Polly Toynbee’s column in full
Clegg dismisses 'defeat' poll as 'utter bilge'
Posted at 15.30, Thurs 5 Feb 2015
Nick Clegg has dismissed as “utter, utter bilge” a Survation poll suggesting he faces political death on 7 May - in short, that he will lose his seat of Sheffield Hallam.
As we reported here earlier, the Survation poll put the Lib Dems ten points behind Labour in the seat, neck-and-neck with the Tories in second place. It was a much grimmer forecast than the Ashcroft poll from earlier this winter which put Clegg three points ahead of Labour, making him susceptible to defeat through tactical voting.
But as The Guardian reports, questions have been raised about the methods employed by Survation: respondents were not prompted to think about the fact that Clegg was no ordinary candidate, while the results were not ‘weighted’ to take into account past voting intentions, which is the norm in modern polling.
The Survation poll was commissioned by the Unite union. While that might raise suspicions, pollsters are rarely swayed by these things. However, Clegg clearly thinks differently. “This poll is such utter, utter bilge,” he said on his LBC Radio show. “Surprise, surprise, the trade union paymasters of the Labour party have come out with a poll showing Labour is ahead.”
Read The Guardian’s report in full
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