2015 general election

Just to confuse matters, the Tories have launched two very incongruous policies

With every policy launch during an election campaign, it is worth asking why a party has chosen that policy and why it is launching it on that particular day. This is generally because answering those questions helps you work out what message a party is trying to send and whether they are on the defensive or offensive. But today it is worth asking this question simply because it would be nice to get an answer: why have the Tories launched two completely unconnected policies which don’t sound very Toryish on the same day? One of these policies is the freezing of rail fares, which begs the question, why did the Tories expend so

Steerpike

Have the Tories made an ‘electoral pact’ with Ukip?

This week David Cameron invited Ukip voters to ‘come home‘ to the Conservative party. ‘Come with us, come back home to us rather than risk all of this good work being undone by Labour,’ he pleaded at a campaign event. However for all of Cameron’s talk, Labour sources claim that the Tories would be quite happy to form a coalition with Ukip after the election. Now, Jonathan Reynolds, the Labour MP for Stalybridge and Hyde, says that a pact has been made in Tameside, the Greater Manchester borough, between Ukip and the Tories. It’s claimed that the parties have agreed not to stand against each other in a number of wards for the local election in

Campaign kick-off: 27 days to go

It’s the Conservatives’ turn to try and bounce back today. After the ‘dead cat’ thrown onto Ed Miliband’s kitchen table, it looks as if Tories parties will be hoping to return to policy — not slashing non-doms — and move away from personal attacks. To help guide you through the melée of stories and spin, here is a summary of today’s main election stories. 1. Polls everywhere, but not a lead in sight No fewer than five opinion polls were released yesterday, three of which showed Labour leads while two had the Conservatives ahead. The Guardian went as far to deem Thursday as ‘The day the polls turned’, but there is still no clear frontrunner at this

Is Ed Miliband really prepared to risk £8.27 billion on an election stunt?

It’s a common assumption that non-doms pay little tax. It’s certainly an assumption made by Ed Miliband, who has announced plans to scrap the non-dom status for long-term residents. ‘There are 116,000 non-doms costing hundreds of millions of pounds to our country. It can no longer be justified and it makes Britain a tax haven for the few,’ he said. But how does Miliband explain the £8.27 billion of income tax and NIC paid by non-doms in 2012-13? The average non-dom claiming the remittance basis pays £132,762 of income tax per annum, 25 times more than the average British tax payer. Whether Miliband likes to admit it or not, non-doms make a significant direct financial contribution

Podcast special: polls and personal attacks

With 28 days to go, is the momentum beginning to move towards Labour? In this View from 22 podcast special, Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss the latest polls and campaign developments. Five new polls have been released today, three of which show a Labour lead — should the Tories be worried? Have the two Scottish leaders’ debates made any difference to the SNP’s vote? And was Michael Fallon’s attack on Ed Miliband premeditated? You can subscribe to the View from 22 through iTunes and have it delivered to your computer every week, or you can use the player below:

Three new polls put Labour ahead

Three new polls out today have put Labour ahead of the Tories. At a time when the Conservatives are firing all guns at the opposition, Labour appear to be gaining some momentum. According to a new Survation/Daily Mirror poll, Labour is four points ahead on 35 per cent, compared to the Tories on 31 per cent, Ukip on 15, the Lib Dems on nine and the SNP and Greens both on four. Panelbase has conducted an online poll, which suggests Labour has a six-point lead at 37 per cent and the Conservatives are on 31 per cent. TNS has also released a poll which puts Labour ahead by three points

Steerpike

Coffee Shots: More election yellow lines for Labour

Forget the red lines in this election, it’s the yellow lines that Labour are having a daily struggle with. Yesterday it was there campaign bus, today it’s Ed Miliband’s motorcade. The vehicle was snapped flouting the law in Victoria this morning: A gas guzzling Range Rover for his security detail? Whatever happened to the Energy and Climate Change Secretary who made a commitment, back in 2009, to cut our emissions by a third by 2020?

Steerpike

Labour accuse Lynton Crosby of ‘going nuclear’ to distract from non-dom row

Despite their leader playing the pious ‘not angry, but disappointed’ shtick at his press conference this morning, it’s not all po-faces over in Labour land after the Tories’ latest attack on Ed Miliband. ‘Lynton Crosby has literally had to go nuclear to distract from non-doms,’ chuckles a chirpy Labour source. Tory sources back this up, saying it was Crosby’s personal idea to re-open the ‘stab in the back’ narrative. Strikingly, Philip Hammond refused to repeat this language on the television today. ‘But it’s a perfectly reasonable attack line,’ says a disgruntled Labour source. ‘In the Labour leadership campaign, Ed was attacked for stabbing his brother in the back. Then, Ed’s people reacted as they reacted now

Alex Massie

Sturgeon vs Murphy vs Davidson is the best show in British politics

Right now, you know, Nicola Sturgeon vs Jim Murphy vs Ruth Davidson is the best show in British politics. It really is. Better, for sure, than David Cameron vs Ed Miliband vs Nick Clegg. The three Scottish leaders are each substantial – and likeable – figures in their own right but it also helps that the question of Scotland is a large and important issue upon which there is mighty disagreement. That makes for a heftier, more passionate, kind of politics. The future matters and is, depending upon our choices, very different. It is more than just a managerial process. This week’s two Scottish debates confirmed all this. They were, as

Isabel Hardman

There’s no need for the Tories to descend into the gutter

You might be forgiven for expecting that a Defence Secretary giving a speech on defence during an election campaign would involve an announcement about his party’s defence policy. And Michael Fallon did ‘announce’ something today, which is that the Tories would commit to four nuclear submarines, updated missiles and warheads in a renewal of the Trident continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent. This was an announcement in the sense that the Defence Secretary said it in a speech with a party-branded board behind him, but it wasn’t a surprise. What was a surprise was that Fallon, usually one of the cannier political operators out there, managed to give a speech attacking another

Fraser Nelson

Sturgeon hints that the SNP would never back a Labour budget

“Is it sensible to spend your way out of debt?” ran the opening question in the last night’s Scottish leaders debate – marking it out, straight away, as something very different from politics-as-usual. It was set in Aberdeen, hence the greater concentration of common sense. The six-way debate was feisty and refreshing, and of a calibre higher than the seven-way UK leaders’ debate. Scotland has joined Denmark in producing the best political drama, except this is real. Nicola Sturgeon won last week’s UK debate, I’d give Tuesday’s to Tory leader Ruth Davidson. I’m not sure anyone won, or lost, last night – but unlike last week’s melee, we did learn

Campaign kick-off: 28 days to go

Trident is set to be the big issue today — but the fight isn’t just about policy. Several newspapers have splashed on the news that the Tories are attempting to embarrass Labour over whether they would allow the SNP to box them into scrapping our nuclear deterrent. To help guide you through the melée of stories and spin, here is a summary of today’s main stories. 1. Fallon vs. Miliband The Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has launched an attack on Ed ‘backstabber’ Miliband in the Times today — claiming that he would trade renewing Trident for SNP support to prop up his government. ‘Ed Miliband stabbed his own brother in the back to become

Podcast: what if Ed wins, the madness of Scottish politics and Catholic wars

Ed Miliband could still win the general election, but what would happen next? On the latest View from 22 podcast, The Telegraph’s Dan Hodges discusses this week’s Spectator cover feature on what to expect from a Miliband premiership with George Eaton of the New Statesman. Would Miliband manage to take his lofty ideas about reshaping capitalism into No.10? Or would he be more pragmatic in power? Like his mentor Gordon Brown, could Miliband’s indecisiveness turn out to be a fatal flaw? James Forsyth and Alex Massie also discuss the current madness of Scottish politics. As we saw during the two Scottish leaders’ debates, it appears there is nothing that can dent the SNP’s popularity — even a leaked memo about Nicola Sturgeon’s desire to keep David Cameron in No.10 has been

Ashcroft marginal polls show Tory-Labour races remain tight — and Ukip is falling behind

The Tory-Labour battleground remains very close. Lord Ashcroft has returned to ten competitive marginal seats in his latest round of polling and has found swings to Labour, ranging from 0.5 per cent to four per cent. According to his latest polls, the Conservatives are set to hold onto five of these marginals: Blackpool North & Cleveleys, Gloucester, Kingswood, Pendle and Loughborough — the last represented by Education Secretary Nicky Morgan. Use the interactive chart above to see the latest polls. In the other five marginals, Pudsey is a tie between the two parties — as it was in November last year — while Labour is set to take Harrow East,

Toby Young

Ed Miliband couldn’t care less about education reform

The editor of The Spectator isn’t the only person thinking about the prospect of Ed Miliband becoming the next Prime Minister. Eighty educationalists have signed a letter in the Daily Mail today warning about the danger of a future Labour government curtailing academy freedoms. They’re concerned about Ed Miliband’s pledge that Labour would reintroduce ‘a proper local authority framework for all schools’ – which sounds a lot like placing all taxpayer-funded schools back under local authority control. The letter-writers flag up two freedoms they are particularly concerned about: the freedom that academies and free schools have to set their own pay and conditions and the freedom they have over the curriculum.

Alex Massie

Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP continue to defy the usual laws of politics

It’s nice to be noticed. I cannot recall the Scottish portion of a UK general election ever exciting this much interest from folk unfortunate enough to live south of the Tweed. I don’t blame southrons for wondering just what in god’s name is happening up here, however. These are uncharted waters for all of us. And yet, despite that, it is a little less revolutionary than it seems at first. Consider these numbers: 39, 33, 29, 32. That’s the share of the constituency vote won by Labour in the four elections to the Scottish parliament. And then there are these numbers: 29, 27, 33 and 45. That’s the share won

Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Election fatigue strikes again

After Mr S revealed the angry note one disgruntled voter in Bedford put on their door after being bombarded with Labour campaign leaflets, election fatigue has now spread to children too. It’s not just Labour having a negative effect on the public; David Cameron appeared to have sent a child to sleep on a trip to the Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Primary School in Westhoughton. If you know of anyone else who has fallen victim to this condition, please notify Steerpike immediately.

Watch: Green Party releases quirky PPB with spoof boy band ‘Coalition’

The party political broadcasts of this campaign have been pretty dull. Until the Green Party released its video entitled ‘Change The Tune’ this afternoon, that is. The Greens suggest that David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage are all so similar they might as well be in the same boyband. Cue some truly terrible lookalikes in the band ‘Coalition’ singing about ‘a party political harmony’, ‘austerity, oh austerity’ and ‘joining the one true coalition’. You can watch the PPB — which has surprisingly high production values for a small party — above, or download the song (for free) from Bandcamp. At first, the video seems completely baffling: why on earth would a political