2015 general election

Labour has decreed today it won’t go into a formal coalition with the SNP, but this won’t stop the Tories from attacking Ed Miliband over the possibility. Despite Miliband’s proclamation that ‘Labour will not go into coalition government with the SNP’ and ‘there will be no SNP ministers in any government I lead’, a Tory source says ‘we’ll continue to campaign on this’. So expect more stunts and adverts highlighting the dangers of any union between Labour and the SNP. Conservative HQ has upped the ante of its Labour/SNP attacks recently, running the Saatchi pocket ad (above) in The Guardian, Independent or New Statesman during Labour’s Manchester conference this weekend, while dressing up Conservative activists in Alex Salmond masks holding Soleros lollies

George Osborne is the most political of Chancellors, and his Budget today will doubtless read like a party political broadcast. The economic momentum is on his side: soaring employment, plunging inflation, fuel prices down. But he has had more trouble with the public finances than he expected (as things turned out he could afford it, as global borrowing rates have plunged). But in the interests of balance, here are a few economic bloopers that he won’t be boasting about. 1. The deficit plan: the single biggest disappointment of his five years. Once, he defined himself by his ability to abolish the structural deficit by the 2015 election. Now, it’ll be 2018-19 before the books are balanced. He has overseen many

Later today, Vince Cable will launch his traditional conference attack on the Tories. He’ll denounce them for their positions on Europe and immigration. But his pre-conference interview in The Guardian will have, for once, delighted the Tories. For in it, Cable rules out a deal with the SNP. Now, this is a turn-around from Cable. Just last month, he said “We’re perfectly happy to work with the SNP. There’s no taboo on the SNP. ” But Cable’s decision to rule it out on the grounds that ‘It’s virtually inconceivable that you can have a coalition with a party that is committed to breaking up your country’ will please the Tories

If general elections were won on how swanky a campaign office is, the Greens would beat the Lib Dems hands down in Bristol West. Their candidate Darren Hall works out of a smart, airy office overlooking the harbour in one of the most expensive commercial parts of the city. It’s all thanks to Vivienne Westwood, who has funded the office as part of her support for the Greens, and given Hall was until recently keeping most of his campaign materials in a garage, it’s quite a step up. Indeed, it puts him in far more glamorous quarters than the Lib Dems, who are working in a garage, albeit a converted

At a time when Russian fighter jets are forcing civilian flights into UK airports to be diverted, you would expect defence to be one of the big issues of the election campaign. But it is not. It doesn’t fit into the script that the two main parties want to stick to. The Tories’ long-term economic plan doesn’t have space for any foreign entanglements and Labour would rather talk about the National Health Service than national security. But we do need to have a discussion about Britain’s role in the world and how we respond to the Russian threat. It is worth remembering that if Putin tried any funny business in

Justine Miliband has given an interview to the BBC, a sort of ‘back my husband, my hero’ contribution to the Labour election campaign. She starts by talking about the pressures on the family and how ‘being a working mother’, she hasn’t really had a chance to think about what it would be like for the family with Ed in Downing Street. ‘I’ve thought about this and I think it’s going to get worse, I think over the next couple of months it’s going to get really vicious, really personal, but I’m totally up for this fight and I’ve thought about the reason why and the reason is because I think