Nigel farage

Three manifestos down, two more to go. Yesterday, the Conservatives launched their plan for government and promised to be ‘the party of the working people’ while the Green Party promised to end the ‘disastrous policy of austerity’ and increasing government spending by £170 billion a year. Today, Ukip and the Liberal Democrats take their turns to explain what they’d like to do. To help guide you through the melée of stories and spin, here is a summary of today’s main election stories. 1. Believe in more spending Ukip is returning to Thurrock for the second time this week to launch its 2015 manifesto. Aside from the usual promises we’ve come to expect — leaving the

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

Nigel Farage is in Great Grimsby today, campaigning with Ukip candidate Victoria Ayling. The last Ashcroft poll focusing on Great Grimsby put Ukip behind Labour by one point, and that was in December 2014. Farage started his day at the docks before visiting a local fish market, to highlight the problems that the European Union’s fisheries policies have caused in towns like Grimsby. But one of the questions is whether Farage can afford to be spending time away from South Thanet when his chances there are on a knife edge. Ukip has one safe seat, and that’s Douglas Carswell’s. Farage has to win his seat and the polls suggest he

Nigel Farage has had a torrid few days – exactly as he’d planned. He had all six of his fellow contestants in the TV debate ganging up on him over immigration, just as he’d hoped. He’s provoked the Liberal Metropolitan Elite into attacking him over his comments about health tourism and HIV, just as he’d hoped. And today, to cap it all, he’s claiming a Tory defection. Mike Whitehead had been the Conservative candidate in Hull West and Hessle, standing against Alan Johnson in the Labour safe seat. The Tories came third here in 2010. Farage said this morning: ‘I am delighted to be welcoming Mike to the party at this exciting

On Thursday night, David Cameron didn’t eviscerate the competition. But nor did he suffer any damage and that, to Tory high command, meant that it was job done. The Tory leadership didn’t want any debates at all, they’d rather not have taken the risk. So, to get through this one debate with the dynamics of the campaign unchanged was, to their mind, a result. As Cameron enjoyed a late night drink with Samantha Cameron, George Osborne and his key aides on Thursday, he reflected on how much better he felt than he did after the first debate five years ago when he knew that he had not only underperformed but

I’ve been away, in the north, free from Wifi and mobile phone reception, mercifully. I watched Thursday’s debate in a noisy pub so heard none of it and was forced to rely on ITV’s subtitles. I was greatly attracted to the Ukip cause by Nigel Farage’s bold assertion that “Britain needs plain-speaking partridges.” Yes indeed. I think we are all sick of equivocating pheasants and less than candid quail. The deaf must be rolling around with laughter every day. I caught Radio 4 PM programme on the way home, on Friday. Its coverage of the debate consisted of taking three statements made during the debate and subjecting them to what they called

That was a surprisingly well-mannered debate, tightly moderated, with the main chaos coming from the member of the audience who decided to start heckling (and then stopped, followed by an ominous thud). There wasn’t a big upset at any point, and even the big moments weren’t really big stories. Those big moments were Nick Clegg going straight for David Cameron at the start, Nigel Farage’s rather scary rant, Leanne Wood telling Farage he should be ashamed of himself, Miliband on zero hours contracts, and Clegg turning on Miliband at the end. But no-one messed up. David Cameron came across as being really rather uninspiring, but I suspect that this was the

You might have thought Ukip bosses would want to distance themselves from their outspoken and eccentric candidate Winston McKenzie after he organised the disastrous ‘Carnival of Colour’ in Croydon last year before going on to declare that Farage was bigger than Jesus. However, Ukip don’t play by the usual rules. In fact senior party figures wear their allegiance to Winston on their sleeve, almost literally. At the launch of the party’s pledge card in Westminster on Monday, party chairman Steve Crowther proudly sported a handmade purple fox that looked like it might have been made by a primary school child. In fact rather than beeing the work of a seven-year-old, it was more of McKenzie’s

The stakes have been raised, at least psychologically, for Thursday night’s debate. Today’s YouGov poll has Labour four points ahead, in contrast to a two point Tory lead in their last survey. This is being seen in Westminster as a Paxman bounce for Miliband. If this Labour leads is still in place at the end of the Easter weekend, Tory nerves will begin to fray. Thursday’s debate will be a crowded affair with seven leaders on stage. Despite it being a two hour debate, there’ll only be time for four questions. As I say in the Mail On Sunday, the debate will almost certainly turn into Cameron versus the rest as they

The establishment drive to marginalise Ukip has been under way for three months now, and it has having its effect. You will not read anything about Ukip in your newspapers unless it is a negative story — some half-witted candidate’s office fraudulently claiming expenses, or a disappointed member explaining that they’re all vile people and so on. The papers have, by and large, cottoned on to the fact that Nigel Farage saying something a little gamey about race is not, actually, a negative story. Whenever the Ukip leader mused in moderate terms that he found it uncomfortable to sit on a train where he was the only person speaking English,