Election

Read the latest General Election news, views and analysis.

Tuesday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The truth about pensioners and tax

The Tories’ ‘Triple Lock Plus’ is a pretty blatant attempt to secure the votes of a demographic group which is more inclined to vote Conservative than any other. That much is clear. The party’s proposal would give pensioners a high personal tax allowance to spare them from having to pay income tax as the state pension rises faster than either inflation or average earnings. If the government wants to spare pensioners from having to pay income tax it could, of course, raise the income tax threshold for everyone. But instead, while pensioners are spared tax, the personal tax allowance for working-age people is due to be frozen for another four

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour takes down Tory attack TikTok video

Another day, another gaffe. Only this time it’s the Labour party in the firing line, not so long after the launch of its brand new TikTok account. It has been live for all of four days and Starmer’s army has been busy getting to work on their latest form of social media self-promotion — posting 30 videos, gathering 75,900 followers and amassing 1.5 million likes. But it’s not all been plain sailing for the Sir Keir’s lefty lot. Labour’s comms team seems to have gotten a little ahead of itself in its rush to take the platform by storm and there are concerns the party may have, er, broken some

Debbie Hayton

Why the Tories’ national service idea is unworkable

When the Tories start talking about national service they really are grasping at straws. The concept might possibly appeal to some older voters nostalgic for an earlier time, but Rishi Sunak’s ideas are quite different from the military conscription of young men that lasted from 1949 to 1963. Let’s put aside the 30,000 or so ‘selective’ military placements for the ‘brightest and the best’. Yes, young people can offer much to the nation’s approach to cyber security and the defence of our IT infrastructure against external threats. Fresh minds see solutions that others may not. But if that isn’t happening already, what has the government been doing for the past

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

The Tory ‘tax-cutting’ agenda is fooling no one

Something has to go badly wrong for anyone to become nostalgic for 2020. But the Tory’s latest election announcement – to create the ‘Triple Lock Plus’ – is just the thing to do it. The first autumn after the pandemic hit, then-chancellor Rishi Sunak was looking at the public finances in dismay, wondering how he might even try to account for the heavy spending that he, his party and Labour had rushed through parliament earlier in the year. But the strange circumstances of the pandemic – including the mandate for young and low-risk people to ‘stay home’ – also created an opportunity to address some outstanding and unfair public policy: the triple

James Price

The Conservatives must offer something to young people

Another day, another controversial new announcement from a Conservative campaign keen to show that it has new ideas. Today, it is the so-called ‘Triple Lock Plus’, which will mean that, should the Tories get back in, pensioners’ tax-free allowance will automatically increase in line with the highest of wages, earnings, or 2.5 per cent. The state pension will never be taxed. They claim it would give pensioners a tax cut of almost £300 per year by the end of the next parliament. Younger people expect a quid pro quo from the government, and from older people who have had it pretty good. This follows the national service announcement, and both in conjunction

John Oxley

The Tories have become the party of the pensioner

In several countries across Europe, ‘pensioners parties’ sit in parliament expressly to reflect the interests of older voters. The most successful is perhaps Slovenia, where the Democratic Party of Pensioners had a parliamentary presence from 1992 to 2022, and often made up part of the governing coalition. In the UK, attempts to create pensioners parties have faltered. Now, in a desperate grasp for survival, the Conservatives are attempting to become one.  Rishi Sunak has kicked off the first full week of the campaign with a policy to further entrench the Tory support of better-off older people. Where once the triple lock was enough, now he has unveiled the ‘Triple Lock

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Rachel Reeves avoids the Miliband trap

Rachel Reeves is out once on the campaign trail once again today as she gives her first major speech since Rishi Sunak called a July election. Addressing business leaders in the East Midlands, Reeves will vow to ‘lead the most pro-growth Treasury in our country’s history’. So far, no surprises – the shadow chancellor has made similar promises before. However, what Reeves and her team will be patting themselves on the back for pulling off is a letter in today’s Times. Over one hundred business chiefs have signed a letter endorsing Labour’s economic plans and saying it is time for change. They include Iceland supermarket founder Malcolm Walker, the TV

Eliot Wilson

Labour needs to be clearer on defence

It used to be axiomatic of British politics that the Conservative party held a reputational advantage when it came to defence and security, and that Labour always had to make a greater effort to reassure the electorate. Opinion polls suggest that’s no longer true, but atavistic political instincts are resilient, and even now Sir Keir Starmer and his shadow cabinet colleagues feel a degree of pressure. Hence the deployment of Yvette Cooper. The Labour party should know what its foreign and security policy goals are, beyond nebulous ambitions of ‘keeping Britain safe’ The shadow home secretary, who is only 55 but one of the veterans of the modern Labour party,

Monday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Which seats are the Scottish Tories targeting in the election?

The Scottish Conservatives were facing a difficult election this summer but SNP leader John Swinney may have thrown them a lifeline. In choosing to attack Holyrood’s standards committee for proposing a 27-day suspension for nationalist MSP Michael Matheson, Swinney has put his party on the wrong side of public opinion. Matheson was censured for running up an £11,000 data bill on his parliamentary iPad during a family holiday in Morocco and trying to have the taxpayer cover it. Swinney claims the standards process was prejudiced by one of the committee’s members and says he will oppose its recommendations. This has been a welcome surprise for the Scottish Tories. A senior

Steerpike Steerpike

CCHQ memo blasts ‘noncommittal’ Tory MPs

It’s all a barrel of gaffes at CCHQ these days. The latest slip-up comes in the form of a leaked memo in which party staff criticised Conservative MPs for failing to ‘get behind’ the election campaign — accusing some of focusing too much on ministerial business, others of being more concerned with holiday plans and adding that a number of seats were rather low on funds. Oh dear… The controversial email in question delivered to Tory politicians was mistakenly sent with two attachments: one with a constituency breakdown with constructive comments, and another with rather frank remarks about what CCHQ staff thought of the Conservatives’ campaign efforts. The memo focused

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Starmer’s ‘why Labour’ message needs to get slicker

Keir Starmer has been considerably less discombobulated by the election announcement than the party that made it, but he still has some catching up to do. The Labour leader knows that he has to answer the question of ‘why Labour’ to voters who have already largely accepted that there is a strong reason to change from the Tories. To that end, his speech this morning was an attempt to explain to the public what Labour now stands for. Slightly improbably, Starmer started by telling the audience that they really should visit Oxted. The reason for this was that Starmer sees Oxted as being the way he can explain his politics

Steerpike Steerpike

SNP candidates struggle to Crowdfund campaign money

Uh oh. As election campaigns kick off, a number of nationalist politicians have had a rather rocky start. The SNP has already gone into election season on the back foot as polls consistently predict the party is likely to lose around half its Westminster MPs in the next election. To make matters worse the SNP is also having trouble attracting investment while the police probe into party finances hangs hangs over it. The latest accounts show the Nats saw an £800,000 financial loss as membership numbers fell and donations dried up. Now it transpires that Scottish National party candidates have had to resort to launching Crowdfund pages to try and

Eliot Wilson

The logic of national service

It would be hard to argue that the Conservatives have had a flawless start to the 2024 general election campaign. Rishi Sunak’s rain-drenched Downing Street announcement, the removal of a Sky News journalist from a media event, the symbolism of an inexplicable prime ministerial visit to Belfast’s Titanic Quarter – almost every move so far has required immediate damage control. The unveiling of a plan to introduce some kind of compulsory national service seems at first glance like another hasty gambit which has created its own ecosystem of problems. The idea that it is an unacceptable curtailment of personal liberty is hard to sustain ‘Bring back national service!’ is a

Keiran Pedley

Could Scotland decide the election result?

The starting gun for the general election has been fired. This 2019 parliament is over and we will have a new government in Westminster in six weeks’ time. There have been many significant political inflection points this parliament. Partygate of course. The departure of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss’s brief period as Prime Minister. Arguably as important as any of this is the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon in March 2023. Since her surprise departure from Scottish politics, it is worth dwelling on just how far the SNP have fallen.  At the 2019 general election, they won 45 per cent of the vote and 48 of Scotland’s 59 seats. At the height

Sunday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Tories and Labour go to battle on TikTok

The digital election battle is heating up. Just a few days ago the Labour party joined TikTok, the social media app. Today the Conservatives have followed suit. The Tories have launched on the app this Sunday with a post from Rishi Sunak heralding his new election policy: mandatory national service. In the first video on the app, Sunak said: ‘Hi TikTok, sorry to be breaking into your politics-free feed – but I’m making a big announcement today and I’m told that a lot of you already have some views on it. So, first thing, no – I’m not sending everyone to go and join the army. What I am doing

Sam Bidwell

Young people are right to resent national service

Young Britons like me have already done our fair share of national service. For two gruelling years, we sacrificed the best years of our lives to protect the elderly from Covid, dutifully abiding by each arbitrary restriction on our freedoms. Parties were cancelled, concerts were postponed, and evenings were spent alone, all in the name of national solidarity. Like most of my peers, my memories of university life will forever be tarnished by lockdowns, social distancing, and Zoom lectures. Even now Covid is over we still face sky-high house prices, crippling student debt, and a historically high tax burden, which squeezes working-age people in order to fund the ever-increasing cost

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Will Labour raise taxes?

What is Labour’s tax-and-spend agenda? This is an outstanding question the party needs to answer before polling day – and Labour seems to know it. That is presumably why shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves sat in the BBC One hot seat on the first Sunday of the election campaign. ‘I totally agree I have to show the sums add up’ Reeves told Laura Kuenssberg this morning.  But what will be done to make that possible: higher taxes, more borrowing, or a reduction in spending? Unsurprisingly, Reeves did not want to make firm commitments in most of these areas. The shadow chancellor did commit though once again to not raising certain taxes.

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

This national service plan is a patronising gimmick

The idea of bringing back national service to knock into shape teenage tearaways and long-haired layabouts was a staple of my youth. Peppery comment articles along those lines in the old, broadsheet Sunday Express or News of the World would crop up intermittently through the ill-disciplined 1970s. Typically they would then be countered by the response that ‘the army doesn’t want them’ and the idea would die down for a while. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality It should therefore come as no surprise that a prime minister desperate to reconnect with a long-lost tribe of social conservatives is now proposing

Steerpike Steerpike

James Cleverly: no one will go to jail over national service

Well, Rishi Sunak’s new flagship policy of reintroducing national service has certainly gone off with a bang this morning. The policy, announced last night, would see 18-year-olds given the option of applying for a military post, or spending one weekend every month for a year working for the fire services, police, the NHS, or local charities. According to the Conservative party the scheme will be mandatory.  What happens though if young people refuse to take part? It seemed initially at least the Tories were feeling bullish about cracking down on any absconding youths, with a leaked internal Q&A from the Conservatives suggesting that the party wasn’t ruling out arresting 18-year-olds

John Oxley

Sunak’s national service may end up backfiring

The idea of bringing back national service has been kicking around British politics for about five times longer than the policy itself lasted. Mandatory conscription was introduced by the Attlee government and dismantled gradually from 1957 to 1963. Those old enough to have experienced it will now be in their mid-80s. Following Rishi Sunak’s announcement last night, the Tories might introduce it to a new generation.  When voters see you as the political wing of the OAPs, this is how national service will be viewed Though the PM’s main attack line on Starmer is his lack of plan, the Conservative party’s national service suggestion is itself quite vague. Sunak is