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

Tories welcome hat-trick of economic stats

Posted at 12.45, Tues 31 March 2015

Chancellor George Osborne has welcomed a “hat-trick of good news” about the UK economy released this morning.

GDP: The Office for National Statistics has revised upwards its growth forecast for the last quarter of 2015 from 0.5 per cent to 0.6 per cent. It has also upped its estimate for GDP growth in 2014 from 2.6 to 2.8 per cent – the highest since 2006.

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Disposable income: Osborne himself favours this measure - real household disposable income (RHDI) - as the best indicator of how things are going. New figures show RHDI per head in the final quarter of last year was 2.2 per cent above its pre-crash level.

Consumer confidence: The GfK research group’s monthly index shows consumer confidence hit a 13-year high in March. Britons are expected to “splash the cash” over the Easter weekend, says GfK.

Osborne jumped on the figures, claiming: "This is good news for families and businesses across the country... Voters now face a stark choice: do we stick with a plan which is working, delivering growth and jobs, or do we put all that at risk with Ed Miliband whose policies of more spending, more borrowing and higher taxes will lead to economic chaos?"

Cameron denies fighting dirty

Posted at 12.30, Tues 31 March 2015

David Cameron has denied this that it was inappropriate to attack Ed Miliband personally from the doorstep of Number Ten yesterday, The Mole writes. “The tone was absolutely right,” he insisted on the Today programme this morning.

Presenter Sarah Montague reminded the PM that it was he who once pledged to “let sunshine rule the day” in British politics. Cameron responded that there was a clear choice before the British electorate - sticking with the plan that worked, or the “chaos” that Ed Miliband would bring.

Read The Mole's column in full

Dave vs Ed: personalities DO matter

Posted at 10.15, Tues 31 March 2015

We are meant to resent the focus on personality in politics – but this is priggish, argues Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times. “Personality does so much to determine a government’s performance that, if anything, we do not talk about it enough.”

Ed Miliband is a man seized by his beliefs, says Ganesh, while David Cameron “talks of values and visions so reluctantly that the words seem to sting his throat as he utters them|”.

So how might each man govern over the next five years, if given the chance? “Another Cameron administration would be pushed around by events and Tory eurosceptics. He lacks the ideological rudder to see off these pressures."

Miliband, on the other hand, “would dash left for a year, tampering in markets and raising taxation at the top end. He would over-reach, upset voters and businesses, and end up sheepishly governing from the centre for the sake of survival.”

Read Janan Ganesh’s FT article in full

Cameron takes risk with home quote

Posted at 10.00, Tues 31 March 2015

In an extended interview with the Daily Mail in which he promised to put “rocket boosters” under Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy policy, David Cameron talked about his own home-buying experience.

“That’s the most natural instinct in the world - owning your own home,” said Cameron. “I’ll never forget the moment I got the first keys to my first flat and walked through the door. You just feel so excited that you own something and you’re going to take care of it.

That was a bold thing to say, comments Fraser Nelson of The Spectator. It’s an open invitation to enterprising journalists “to establish just how much of a mortgage he had to take out on his first flat”. Quite.

Read the Daily Mail interview in full

Miliband’s ‘Paxo bounce’ slips away

Posted at 10.00, Tues 31 March 2015

On Sunday, YouGov gave Labour a four-point lead, suggesting a “bounce” for Ed Miliband following his feisty response to Paxo’s attempt to stuff him.

Now, a new YouGov poll shows the Tories climbing and the two parties on level pegging again, Don Brind writes. If there was a bounce, it appears to have slipped away.

But Miliband can take heart from a ComRes poll in London. It shows Labour a solid 14 points ahead of the Conservatives, on course to take as many as nine Tory seats in the capital.

Read Don Brind’s column in full

Labour takes the fight to SNP

Posted at 10.00, Tues 31 March 2015

Labour has not give up hope of keeping more of its seats in Scotland than the pollsters predict, writes Jack Bremer, and Ed Miliband is pinning his hopes on a man called Patrick Heneghan. He’s the party’s director of field operation - and he apparently has a plan to deal with the SNP surge

Labour are also reminding Scots that it was the Nationalists who, back in 1979, helped usher in the Thatcher era by supporting her motion of no confidence in Jim Callaghan’s Labour government. Thirty-six years on, they still have a lot to answer for, say Labour.

Read Jack Bremer’s article in full