Miliband reaches out to 'moderate' Tories
Posted at 09.20, Mon 20 April 2015
Ed Miliband made a direct pitch yesterday to moderate Tory supporters to vote for him on 7 May, saying that Labour was now a party of “fiscal discipline” and would save the country from David Cameron’s right-wing, anti-European agenda.
In an interview with The Observer, he said: “I am a politician of the left, but I am positioned where the mainstream of politics is positioned. I am on the centre ground of politics.”
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Cameron, by contrast, was “ideologically beached” and had no answers about how to tackle inequality and would never stand up to tax avoiders.
The Observer commented that Miliband’s appeal to disaffected Tories was “partly designed” to counter Tory claims that if Labour emerge the largest party on 8 May, they will team up with the SNP in a left-wing coalition.
“But Labour strategists also believe Miliband is succeeding in building his reputation in the country during the current election campaign and is appealing to centre-ground voters who had believed, beforehand, that he was not prime ministerial and was too left-wing.”
Read The Observer interview in full
Miliband and the hen party love-in
Posted at 09.20, Mon 20 April 2015
‘Ed Miliband, Love God’ never looked like a winning formula for Labour’s spin doctors. But not for the first time, the Labour leader has surprised the press on this front.
On Saturday, Miliband was in Chester when members of a hen party spotted the Labour battle bus. Bride-to-be Nicola Braithwaite demanded a meeting – and photo - with the party leader.
There were screams and cheers as Miliband emerged from the bus to high-five two of the party and ask: “Are you all here with Nicola?”
As The Guardian reports, “A suggestion of a selfie was made by one of the women, prompting the group to chant: ‘Selfie! Selfie! Selfie!’”
As the hen party story made waves on social networks, he Tory-supporting Daily Mail tried to cool it down, suggesting it was a “cringe-worthy moment” and that the 25 screaming women represented Miliband’s “toughest opponents yet”.
Towards a Labour-Lib Dem coalition
Posted at 09.20, Mon 20 April 2015
The headlines are all about the post-election relationship between Ed Miliband and Nicola Sturgeon, should Labour emerge the largest party on 8 May. But is a Labour-Lib Dem coalition what Miliband would really prefer - if the numbers add up?
The Financial Times reports that “Miliband’s allies have started poring through the Liberal Democrat manifesto, claiming there is a ‘pretty substantial overlap’ of policy that could allow a Lib-Lab deal”.
Lord Mandelson, “a long-time Labour conduit for talks with the Lib Dems”, is quoted as saying: “Obviously Ed Miliband’s first choice would be to have a Labour government, pure and simple, and I would strongly support that.
“But if needs must, most in the Labour party would put the Liberal Democrats way ahead of the SNP in terms of desirable allies.”
Read the Financial Times article in full
Tories behind in ‘ground war’
Posted at 09.20, Mon 20 April 2015
Are the Conservatives guilty of under-estimating Labour? It’s been a theme of the weekend as the polls refuse to budge Tory-wards and Ed Miliband’s star begins to rise.
On the BBC's Sunday Politics, Nicholas Watts of The Guardian suggested Team Cameron had been campaigning against a “caricature” of Ed Miliband – the ineffectual geek – but had now come up against “the reality”.
The Economist also paints a picture of Tory complacence. It points out that the Conservative Party has about 150,000 members and their average age is about 68. Labour has about 200,000 members, average age around 50.
More important, Labour has overhauled its electioneering infrastructure, shrinking its central office in London and posting staff to the regions instead. It also selected candidates and hired organisers early, giving them time to build up "community campaigns" along lines devised by Arnie Graf, the American who helped Obama to victory in 2008.
At this late stage, says the Economist, “there is little the Tories can do about their local campaigning weaknesses. Recruiting new members and building election-fighting capacity takes months and years, not days and weeks.”
Read The Economist article in full
England holds key to Labour’s chances
Posted at 09.20, Mon 20 April 2015
The latest polling from Scotland suggests Labour do indeed face a wipeout at the hands of the SNP. But the swing to Labour in England since the last election could still secure Ed Miliband victory on 7 May, Don Brind writes.
That’s because the swing this side of the border is greater than the headlines suggest. The Tories enjoyed an 11 per cent lead at the 2010 election. That’s now down to zero, meaning a swing to Labour of more than 5%. As a result, as many as 70 seats could fall to Labour.
Read Don Brind’s column in full
Tories 'too right-wing' says Ken Clarke
Posted at 10.25, Fri 17 April 2015
The Tories have become too right-wing - which explains why the party hasn’t won a majority at a general election for 23 years. That’s the view of Ken Clarke, one-time Tory Chancellor and Home Secretary.
Asked why the party was not more popular, he told the New Statesman: “Well, it’s become much too right-wing. Which I hope David [Cameron] will continue to seek to redress in coming times.”
Clarke also had a dig at the £25bn of unfunded promises made by Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne in recent weeks. “We’ve got a very good recovery at the moment, but it’s very fragile and can soon be swept away if we start doing silly things.”
He also appeared to critise the more personal attacks from withint the Conservative Party on Ed Miliband. “I disapprove of personal attacks on your opponents. I’ve never done that. I also think it costs you votes.”
Read the New Statesman article in full
Cameron’s no-show attracts ridicule
Posted at 10.15, Fri 17 April 2015
David Cameron’s “no show” at last night’s BBC debate brought him a flock of chickens via Twitter this morning, The Mole writes. It also saw a video clip going viral, in which Bloomberg’s political editor Rob Hutton asked Tory MP Liz Truss: “Do you think we saw the real David Cameron tonight?”
Cameron got one thing right, however: while Ed Miliband might have ruled out a formal coalition with the Scottish Nationalists in his confrontation with Nicola Sturgeon last night, the PM was able to point out that the Labour leader did not rule out a post-election vote-by-vote deal with the SNP. And that, he said, would mean "more borrowing and more taxes".
Read The Mole’s column in full
Who won the debate? Read The Week’s guide
What makes Cameron angry as hell
Posted at 10.30, Thurs 16 April 2015
The Tories are not just the party of the rich, David Cameron insists, and he intends to prove it by getting enough British people to deliver him a Commons majority on election day.
In an interview with BBC Newsnight’s Evan Davis, he admitted he will have failed as Tory leader if he can’t win a majority this time, having fallen short in 2010. But despite the polls pointing to a hung parliament, he believes that voters will come round to the Tories in the final days of the campaign.
In 2010, he said, people were worried about the economy and “weren’t fully sure we had all the ideas and plans”. Now that he has a “track record” he believes they will put their trust in him.
As the Daily Mail reports, Cameron also revealed that accusations that the Conservatives are "the party of the rich" make him "more angry than almost anything else".
Read the Daily Mail article in full
TV debate: anger over Tory spin tactics
Posted at 10.15, Thurs 16 April 2015
Tonight’s the night for the live TV debate where Ed Miliband, Nigel Farage, Nicola Sturgeon, Natalie Bennett and Leanne Wood of Plaid Cymru get the chance to argue how they would do things differently to the Tory-Lib Dem coalition.
The one-and-a-half hour debate, overseen by David Dimbleby, will be broadcast on BBC1 starting at 8 pm.
According to the Daily Mirror, Labour are furious that while David Cameron is “too chicken to take part”, his minions are being permitted by the BBC to enter the “spin room” to lobby journalists covering the debate.
Read the Daily Mirror article in full
Read The Week’s guide to tonight’s debate
Lib Dems face ‘heartland’ wipeout
Posted at 10.15, Thurs 16 April 2015
Within hours of launching the Lib Dem manifesto – in effect, a pitch to join either the Tories or Labour in coalition – Nick Clegg was presented with a most unwelcome poll by ComRes suggesting his party could be reduced from 57 to 19 MPs.
A lot of the damage would be done in the party’s southwest “heartland” where out of 14 seats they could be left with just one – Bath.
It has to be said, however, that the ComRes finding is a lot more pessimistic than the results of various Ashcroft constituency polls, Don Brind writes. Clegg and Co will be clutching onto that straw.
Reads Don Brind’s column in full
'No one’s telling the truth about the NHS'
Posted at 10.15, Thurs 16 April 2015
The Tories and the Lib Dems have made great play of the £8 billion extra a year they plan to find (somehow) for the NHS in the future, The Mole writes.
But the real problem is a lot more immediate, says the health service’s former chief executive, Sir David Nicholson, and not one of the main political parties is addressing the issue honestly.
Read The Mole’s column in full
Confusion reigns as Ukip tackles tampon tax
Posted at 12.45, Wed 15 April 2015
Conservative-supporting papers have performed sterling work on behalf of Tory HQ in recent days, particularly when it comes to putting down Ukip’s hopes in the general election.
But did the Daily Telegraph overstep the mark this morning in its enthusiasm to rubbish the Faragistes?
It headlined its coverage: “From a tampon tax to lifting the smoking ban: our guide to Ukip’s election manifesto.”
If that wouldn’t help put women off voting for Farage, what would?
In fact, a quick read of the manifesto showed that Ukip was being unusually woman-friendly: a Ukip government would SCRAP the five per cent Vat payable on tampons and other sanitary products.
Sticklers for fair play in this election campaign will be pleased to hear that the Telegraph has since corrected its misleading headline. It now reads: “From dumping the tampon tax to lifting the smoking ban: our guide to Ukip’s general election manifesto”.
Read The Week's guide to the Ukip manifesto
Juncker kyboshes Cameron’s EU pledge
Posted at 12.00, Wed 14 April 2015
The Times reports today that sources close to the president of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, have said there will be no EU treaty changes until after 2019.
Yet Cameron’s promised in-out referendum, to be held before the end of 2017 if the Tories win the general election, was supposed to be based on his renegotiating Britain’s terms of membership, writes The Mole. And Cameron made it clear in January that “full-on treaty change” was essential.
So what happens now? Could the British could end up deciding on EU membership without any reforms having been won – thus increasing the chances of a “get out” vote?
Read The Mole’s column in full
2010 Lib Dems could hold the key
Posted at 12.00, Wed 15 April 2015
Many of those who voted for the Liberal Democrats at the 2010 general election - and then deserted the party because they didn’t like the coalition – have still not decided how to vote this time.
And, writes Don Brind, their decision could make all the difference in some marginal seats.
Can they be persuaded that Nick Clegg won’t go back on any of the five new pledges launched today as he did on university tuition fees?
Read Don Brind’s column in full
Read The Week’s guide to the Lib Dem manifesto
Schoolgirl, 7, stumps David Cameron
Posted at 11.20, Tues 13 April 2015
The toughest question David Cameron has faced so far on the election trail came not from Jeremy Paxman or John Humphrys but from a seven-year-old schoolgirl called Reema during a BBC Newsround programme, the Daily Telegraph reports.
“If you could pick one politician apart from yourself to win, who would it be and why?” Reema asked.
“Wow,” the PM responded, apparently shifting uncomfortably in his chair. “If I could pick a politician? Would they have to be living or dead?
“I am afraid it is too difficult to say I would like someone else to win other than me or I wouldn’t be here, and I am quite keen on winning.”
As he got up to leave, Cameron said: “Top question – it is the best one I have been asked all election campaign.”
Read the Daily Telegraph report in full
Parties ‘fighting 2020 campaign in 2015’
Posted at 11.15, Tues 14 April 2015
Determined to cheer up voters by “moving on” from deficit reduction and the miserable business of austerity, David Cameron and Ed Miliband are suddenly fighting an election campaign that is inappropriate, argues Janas Ganesh of the Financial Times.
“This is an election campaign that befits a country with a small fiscal deficit,” warns Ganesh. “Sadly, Britain is not that country. It will borrow about £90bn this year.”
Ganesh goes on: “At precisely the moment that politicians should be shoring up public resolve, they have lapsed into the competitive bidding of a conventional campaign.
"The problem is not any failure on their part to devise a route back to fiscal sanity: both parties, and the Liberal Democrats too, have deficit-reduction plans that reasonable people can compare and choose from.
“The problem is their preference for talking about the cheery stuff instead… The rhetoric of this campaign is that of post-austerity politics. We are running the 2020 election in 2015.”
Read Janan Ganesh’s FT article in full
Inheritance tax vs tuition fees: you choose
Posted at 11.15, Tues 14 April 2014
Which is the more popular initiative – Labour’s pledge to lower tuition fees or the Conservatives’ promise to allow children to inherit the family home (up to a value of £1m) tax free?
Labour’s by far, according to polling conducted by YouGov for The Times. Asked to choose between one or the other, 28 per cent chose “raising the inheritance tax threshold”, while 56 per cent chose “cutting tuition fees”.
See the results of the YouGov polling here
Thatcher, then and now
Posted at 11.15, Tues 14 April 2015
The Tories are the “party of working people” David Cameron claims today as he launches the Conservative manifesto with two headline-grabbing policies aimed squarely at blue-collar families: an extension of the Right to Buy scheme and a tax break for those on the minimum wage.
It represents a “shameless bid” by the Tory leader to attract the sort of voters who put Margaret Thatcher in power and kept her there for more than a decade, The Mole writes.
Ironically, writes Don Brind, the evocation of Maggie Thatcher comes as polling from Tory-held marginal constituencies shows that the Iron Lady’s old seat of Finchley – now called Finchley and Golders Green – could be lost to Labour on 7 May.
Read The Mole’s column in full
Read Don Brind’s column in full
'Silly mistake' has Tory HQ in stitches
Posted at 10.30, Mon 13 April 2015
Readers who still call The Guardian ‘The Grauniad’, in fond memory of the days when the paper was famous for its unlimited typos, will perhaps commiserate with the paper’s chief political correspondent, Nicholas Watt, this morning.
In the first edition of the paper, he wrote of Ed Miliband’s manifesto launch: “He will say Labour is now the fiscally irresponsible party”.
It was soon corrected – but not before some keen-eyed press-watcher at Tory central office had spotted the error and made the most of it, tweeting: “The truth will out. Guardian 1st edition: Labour is now the fiscally irresponsible party. #SameOldLabour.”
Watt was not amused, admitting he had made an error, but castigating the Tories for trying to exploit it. “It was a silly mistake by me. You demean your argument by focusing on it.”
Tory HQ wasn’t giving up that easily. “Mistake? You should have held your ground Nick. IFS have confirmed Labour will continue to run a £30 billion deficit by 2020.”
Will it be 1992 or 1974 all over again?
Posted at 10.15, Mon 13 April 2015
With the opinion polls ponting to deadlock on 7 May, both Labour and the Tories are “looking for solace” in previous election cliff-hangers, says Philip Stevens of the Financial Times. The Tories are hoping for a repeat of April 1992 while Labour pray it’ll be February 1974 all over again.
In 1992, as now, the Tory pitch was essentially negative, “with relentless attacks on Labour’s tax and spending plans and vilification of its leader Neil Kinnock as a politician unfit to be prime minister”. Labour lead the opinion polls – but the pollsters’ methodology had failed to pick up the “shy Tories” who came through on the day and gave John Major victory.
In the first election of 1974, “voters had tired of brushing their teeth in the dark as a consequence of [Ted] Heath’s confrontation with the miners” and Harold Wilson’s Labour won the most seats in a hung parliament. Cameron’s “great fear” says Stevens, is that voters today have become equally weary of austerity and are “seriously suspicious” of Tory motives for cutting public spending.
Read Philip Stevens’s FT article in full
Tories and Labour swap roles
Posted at 10.15, Mon 13 April 2015
Voters will be forgiven for thinking the Tories and Labour have picked up the wrong manifesto at the printers this week. Labour is promising “fiscal rectitude” while the Tories are throwing money at middle-class families (by slashing inheritance tax) and the NHS.
Why? Because Labour desperately wants to be taken seriously on the economy, says The Mole, while the Tories now want to be more positive about the “Conservative dream” after a series of “nasty party” incidents looked like they were turning voters off.
Read The Mole’s column in full
Tories have left it too late, says Ashcroft
Posted at 10.15, Mon 13 April 2015
The Tories have left it too late to find a game-changer that will win them a Commons majority on 7 May, says the pollster Lord Ashcroft. He claims that focus groups with undecided voters “have shown little of substance is getting through to most people”.
What they hear only reinforces what they already think about the parties – good and bad – and it is not helping them make up their minds.
It’s chilling news for David Cameron, writes Don Brind, and it’s not made any better by latest polls showing the parties still neck-and-neck.
Read Don Brind’s column in full
Will tactical voting spoil SNP surge?
Posted at 15.15, Sat 11 April 2015
Don't be fooled by polling figures that suggest all Scots adore the SNP. Many Scots who belong to unionist parties - the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems - are planning to vote tactically to stop the Nationalists, Don Brind writes.
Even Scottish Tories are up for voting Labour if necessary: 44 per cent of Conservative supporters are ready to do so in seats where only Miliband’s party can defeat the SNP. Where the Lib Dems are the challenger to the SNP, they could get the backing of 58 per cent of Tory supporters and 38 per cent of Labour supporters.
Read Don Brind's column in full
Tony Blair rallies Labour troops
Posted at 10.44, Fri 10 April 2015
Tony Blair rallied the troops at Labour HQ yesterday with an upbeat address in which he said he was optimistic about the party’s chances on 7 May. Perhaps he’d seen those opinion polls coming?
As Isabel Hardman of The Spectator reports, it “rather puts paid to the claim that he [Blair] was doing the very minimum required of the former Prime Minister to help his party.”
The well-received address followed Tuesday’s speech in his old constituency, Sedgefield, in which Blair warned of the dangers of Cameron’s EU referendum pledge, and said he agreed with Ed Miliband that inequality was now the central challenge.
Read Isabel Hardman’s article in full
Cameron resurrects his ‘Big Society’
Posted at 10.30, Fri 10 April 2015
David Cameron’s proposal that workers should be allowed three extra days off a year so that they can do good works sees his vision of a ‘Big Society’ being unwrapped again, The Mole writes.
It follows complaints all round that Michael Fallon’s Trident attack on Ed Miliband went over the top and merely risked the Tories being seen once again as the ‘nasty party’.
With new polls pointing to a rise in support for Labour, can the wheels be put back on the Tory campaign wagon in time?
Read the Mole’s column in full
Read Don Brind on the new polls
Ed Miliband’s ‘tangled love life’
Posted at 10.30, Fri 10 April 2015
It just gets better for Ed Miliband, writes Nigel Horne. He’s up in the polls, the Tory ‘non-dom’ attack has backfired and now the Labour leader is being accused of having had a “tangled love life” when nis wife Justine and he first met.
From Wallace to womaniser in one fell swoop - what more could Labour HQ possibly ask for?
Read Nigel Horne’s column in full
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