Conservative party

Douglas Carswell seems rather excited about the Spectator following him around as he campaigns in Clacton, but it’s not clear whether that’s just because our interview starts in McDonald’s. Tucking into a quarter pounder with cheese, the Ukip candidate seems on good form, expounding at length on the failure of mainstream politicians to connect with the electorate, and enthusing about his vision for the party in the future. But a little later, as we plod around the streets of the constituency, his mood changes. He’s getting a lot of messages and calls about a BBC foreign affairs debate that he has pulled out of at the last minute. With each

Given that Nigel Lawson served as chancellor of the exchequer in Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet, Mr S suspects that the Conservatives will have hoped that they could rely on Lawson for a vote of confidence as polling day approaches. Alas, Lawson says that he has been disappointed by the manner in which the Conservatives have conducted their election campaign. Writing in the latest issue of The Spectator, Lawson says that on a recent trip to New York, Americans voiced surprise that the Tories were yet to achieve a significant lead in the polls given the strong state of the British economy: ‘During my round of New York engagements, there was, inevitably, a fair amount of US interest

Things have come to a pretty pass when the two party spokespeople who experience the worst drubbing in a debate are the current Defence Secretary and the Green party representative. In today’s Daily Politics defence debate Rebecca Johnson ended up, after some considerable flapping and obfuscation, disowning a section of the Green party’s website which said membership of a jihadi organisation shouldn’t be illegal. And Michael Fallon repeatedly refused to say that the Tories would support Labour in a vote on Trident renewal, then struggled under tough questions about the Tory failure to commit to spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence. Vernon Coaker also dodged questions on Labour’s

David Cameron is known as the ‘essay crisis’ Prime Minister, and today he did little to dispel that impression. With just 10 days to go until the election, Cameron produced a passionate, excited speech in which he insisted that he was ‘pumped’ about the election and about fighting Labour. Afterwards, when asked what he’d had for breakfast, he roared ‘PORRIDGE!’ with alarming fervour. This is the second furiously enthusiastic speech the Prime Minister has given in as many days, and it represents a significant shift in his tone after accusations of a boring and lacklustre campaign. Boring is, of course, the way Lynton Crosby would rather have it. In 1992,

David Cameron has been bugged in this campaign by the question of whether he’s passionate enough, of whether he really wants it. When Fraser and I asked him about why so many people aren’t sure of whether he has the passion for it a few days back, he replied, ‘I don’t know. There is something about me—I always manage to portray a calm smoothness or something.’ He then went on to explain why as a Conservative he wants to know what the plan is, not just what the passion is. As he quipped, ‘plan plus carrying out a plan equals dream. Dream plus rhetoric equals chaos.’ But in a speech

David Cameron and George Osborne’s campaigning is focused on seats the Tory party wants to hold onto, while Ed Miliband is taking the fight to seats Labour wants to win from them. That’s the view in Labour HQ, and they’ve got figures to back it up: Since 30 March, when the ‘short campaign’ began, Cameron and Osborne have made 61 campaign visits between them, Labour says. More than half have been to Tory-held seats, many of them on the ‘40/40’ list of seats that the Tories need to keep and win in order to end up with a majority. Here’s where they’ve been: Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, Labour says,