General election 2015

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 16 April 2015

Home Launching the Conservative party manifesto, David Cameron, the party leader, told voters he wanted to ‘turn the good news in our economy into a good life for you and your family’. The Tories promised: to eliminate the deficit by the end of the parliament; to provide 30 hours of free child care a week for working parents of three- and four-year-olds; to grant a right for housing association tenants to buy their properties; to increase the inheritance tax threshold for married couples from £650,000 to £1 million (paid for by nobbling tax allowances on pension contributions for those earning £150,000); to raise the threshold of the 40p rate to £50,000 by

The Spectator

A deadly silence

One Friday, 28 people were rescued by the Italian coastguard when the boat on which they were fleeing Libya capsized in the Mediterranean. Arriving homeless and without prospects in a strange land, these were — relatively speaking — the lucky ones. As many as 700 are thought to have drowned. Add them to the tally. On Monday, another boat capsized with 400 souls feared lost. Last year more than 3,000 died in the Mediterranean trying to get to the West. It has become a phenomenon of our times. We do not hear much about life in the supposedly liberated Libya, but the fact that even immigrants into Libya would rather risk death than stay

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Mob rules

A spectre is haunting Europe — and knocking on the door of Downing Street. It has installed a president in France and a mayor in New York. It is causing mayhem in Spain and Greece and insurgency in Scotland and it may yet halt Hillary Clinton’s march to the White House. This idea — left-wing populism — is a radical, coherent and modern response to the financial crisis and the hardship suffered since. It is being effectively harnessed by Ed Miliband, taking him within touching distance of victory. And it may well become the creed that guides the next five years of British government. The Labour manifesto that was published

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Scotland’s new national faith

The Church of England’s catechism begins ‘What is your name?’ The old Presbyterian catechism favoured in Scotland asked a better, sterner question: ‘What is the chief end of man?’ The difference is telling and, in this general election, illuminates something useful about the differences between politics north and south of the Tweed. Nicola Sturgeon is a populist, certainly, but she is offering something stronger on the side. If England’s election offers a meek choice between Cameron and Miliband, Scotland’s is a faith-based affair. The answer to the catechism’s question, in these irreligious days, appears to be that man’s chief end is to glorify Scotland and enjoy her for ever. It

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron must show he’s not too posh to push

At 5.45 a.m. Lynton Crosby holds the first meeting of the day at Conservative campaign HQ. The aim is to work out what threats need to be neutralised that day and what opportunities should be capitalised upon. The early start isn’t macho posturing but a reflection of the modern media environment. The news now moves at such pace that a lie can go all the way round the worldwide web before the truth even has its boots on. The political weather is rarely more changeable than in a close election campaign. In this environment, the trick is to work out what actually matters: what might determine the election. But after

Robert Philpot

Jews against Miliband

When he was seven, Ed Miliband was taken to visit his grandmother in Tel Aviv. Pointing to a black-and-white photograph in her home, young Ed demanded to know who ‘that man in the picture’ was. He was told the man, David, was his grandfather and had died in Poland many years before he was born. Only years later did Miliband realise that his grandfather had been murdered by the Nazis for being Jewish. Miliband’s parents only narrowly escaped a similar fate: fleeing Belgium as the German armies overran it in 1940, his 16-year-old father caught the last boat from Ostend to Britain. In Poland, his mother — together with her sister

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Call me insane, but I’m voting Labour

Quite often when I deliver myself of an opinion to a friend or colleague, the reply will come back: ‘Are you out of your mind? I think that is sectionable under the Mental Health Act.’ In fact, I get that kind of reaction rather more often than, ‘Oh, what a wise and sensible idea, Rod, I commend your acuity.’ There is nothing I say, however, which provokes such fervid and splenetic derision, and the subsequent arrival of pacifying nurses, as when I tell people that I intend to vote Labour at the forthcoming general election. When I tell people that, they look at me the way my dog does when

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Warning: you may be about to vote for more than one government

For the last five years, I’ve been trying to get people interested in the Fixed Term Parliaments Act. No, don’t sidle away. Honestly, this is The Spectator. Aren’t you meant to be into this sort of thing? It’s not as though we’re on a date, for God’s sake. It’s not like we’re in a restaurant and the starter has just come, and I’m droning on about the threshold for a vote of no confidence, and you’re draining your third huge glass of red and thinking, ‘This guy looked waaaay more fun on Tinder. Next time I go to the loo I’m climbing out the window.’ That’s not how it is.

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Did the £20 million Norwegian’s pay row make BG cheaper for Shell?

Helge Lund was widely expected to go into domestic politics when he ended his successful tenure as head of Statoil, the Norwegian state oil and gas company. Instead, he was hired to run BG Group, the troubled former exploration arm of British Gas, but on a promise of such ludicrously rich terms — up to ten times his Statoil salary — that shareholders, the media and Vince Cable howled in protest. An embarrassed BG board had to scale back the offer, though it remained pretty fat and as I wrote at the time, ‘no mention of Lund, however good he turns out to be, will ever omit a jibe at

Thursday

Andrew Marr

Diary – 9 April 2015

So far, what an infuriating election campaign. We have the most extraordinary array of digital, paper and broadcasting media at our fingertips — excellent political columnists, shrewd and experienced number-crunchers, vivid bloggers and dedicated fact-checkers. There has never been a general election in which the interested voter has had access to so much carefully assembled and up-to-the-minute data. And it’s unpredictable, and it matters: the recovery on a knife edge, the future of the UK, our future in Europe — all that. It ought to be thrilling. So why is the campaign proving so tooth-grindingly awful? Simply because the parties have chosen to refuse to tell us what we need

Toby Young Toby Young

Miliband vs Millwall

I’ve been trying to think of a good football analogy to describe the battle between the two main parties as the general election approaches. One suggestion is the second leg of a Champions League game, with the Conservatives having won the first leg by one goal to nil. If we assume that the Tories are playing at home, that means Labour have to score two goals to win, whereas all the Tories have to do is not concede. Last week’s debate certainly felt like that, with Cameron playing a tight, defensive game and Miliband trying to score at every opportunity. The Conservative leader ended up winning on aggregate because the

Dot Wordsworth

Pious

Married to a public-school man (I almost said boy) for many a long year, I can’t bring myself to disqualify politicians for that crime alone. But during last week’s party leaders’ debates I did detect the tang of the Shell, as I think they call upper forms at Westminster, when I heard Nick Clegg say to Ed Miliband: ‘I will leave that pious stuff.’ It echoed from Tom Brown’s Schooldays (at Rugby) long ago or that weird novel The Hill (Harrow). Mr Clegg’s cosmopolitan background looks resistant to establishment conventions, yet, for that very reason, he takes some on board without noticing. It is no coincidence that the Westminster term

The Spectator

Swing time

The age of two-party politics is over: we know that because everyone keeps saying so. We are entering an era of coalitions, apparently, where compromise is king and a wider variety of views will be represented in parliament. These barely comprehensible seven-way television debates are the future, we are assured, and decisive general election results a thing of the past. Look deeper and this analysis falls apart. Even now, Labour and the Conservatives between them have about two thirds of the vote, just as they did at the last general election. What we are witnessing is the collapse of the Liberal Democrats, who have been reduced — on a bad

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 9 April 2015

Home Tony Blair, the former prime minister, opposed a referendum on membership of the EU. In a speech at Sedgefield he said that, following the Scottish referendum, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, knew ‘the perilous fragility of public support for the sensible choice’. Opinion polls following a television debate by seven party leaders, which drew an audience of 7.7 million, were inconsistent. Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish National Party, was held to have made a mark, while Leanne Wood, the leader of Plaid Cymru, and Natalie Bennett polled at between 2 and 5 per cent. Nigel Farage, the leader of Ukip, was seen to sweat profusely. He had

John O'Neill

The Miliband agenda

Here’s what to expect 52p top rate of tax Ed Balls won’t be looking for money when he says the ‘additional’ top rate of tax will go back up — there’s no evidence it will raise any. Top-band income tax will be 50p, which added to the extra 2p National Insurance would give Britain an effective top tax rate of 52 per cent. If it’s a temporary measure, as Balls has hinted, one-percenters will defer bonuses and disappear from the statistics (a problem, when they pay £1 in every £4 of income tax). If it’s permanent, they may scarper. If Balls really wanted to raise money from the rich he’d

Dan Hodges

Ed dawn

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/edcouldstillwin/media.mp3″ title=”Dan Hodges and George Eaton discuss what will happen if Ed wins” startat=40] Listen [/audioplayer]What if Ed Miliband wins? His victory is still seen, especially by those on the right, as a near-impossibility — an event so improbable as to defy the laws of political gravity. But then again, we’re three weeks away from the general election and still the Conservatives still haven’t managed to establish a convincing lead. He might yet defy the bookies. And what then? Imagine it’s the morning of Friday 8 May. Prime Minister Miliband has just crossed the threshold of Downing Street, the famous door swinging shut behind him. What happens next? One

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A Scottish revolution is coming, and everyone’s losing their heads

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/edcouldstillwin/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and James Forsyth discuss the current state of Scottish politics” startat=866] Listen [/audioplayer]Normally, if a candidate whose party came fourth in a constituency last time tells you they’re going to win, you put it down to election derangement syndrome. But in post-referendum Scotland the normal political rules don’t apply. When Joanna Cherry, the SNP candidate for Edinburgh South West, says she’s headed for Westminster — despite the SNP picking up just 12 per cent of the vote here in 2010 — she is probably right. Walking round with Cherry as her team cheerfully canvasses in the early evening sunshine, you can’t help but be struck by

Tim Stanley

Fringe benefits | 9 April 2015

No election night is complete without a man dressed as King Arthur waving a plastic sword as the result is read out. Eccentricity is the bedrock of British democracy. The freedom of a madman to waste £500 to get on the ballot is precious. On these islands, we have a right to rave. And sometimes what we rant about is quite revealing. I’ve been fascinated by eccentric independent candidates ever since as a teenager I met Mr Mark Ellis, a perennial independent running against EU domination and casual littering. He used to patrol Sevenoaks high street with a shopping trolley, collecting rubbish. A profile in the local newspaper revealed that

Sam Waley-Cohen

Grand National Notebook

‘How’s your shoulder?’ someone asked recently, and it was only then I realised, for the first time in a while, that my shoulder felt good again. In last year’s Grand National — you might recall if you watched it on television — I had a heavy fall when going well on Long Run, the wonderful horse on whom I won the Gold Cup. I landed on my shoulder and had to hobble off the course. Those famously intimidating Grand National fences may have been made a bit more forgiving in recent years — thank God! — but they are still huge, and when you fall going over one it hurts.

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Switch over to the Greek debt drama: the final episode must be coming shortly

Bored with the election? Switch over to the Greek debt drama. In this week’s cliffhanger, silver-tongued finance minister Yanis Varoufakis visited IMF chief Christine Lagarde on Sunday, promised to meet his country’s obligations ‘ad infinitum’, and was expected to meet a €450 million repayment to the IMF on Thursday. But more troublesome members of the ruling Syriza party denounced the IMF and Brussels for treating Greece as ‘a colony’, threatening a snap election ‘if creditors insist on an inflexible line’, and warning that public-sector salaries and social security payments must rank ahead of debt as cash runs out. Which it will before August. Greece’s tax collections are so feeble, its