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Expectations just keep increasing for the SNP. Today’s Panelbase poll for the Sunday Times puts the nationalists on an eye-popping 48 percent of the vote in Scotland. Labour activists and candidates report better that on the fabled doorsteps the response they’re getting is much better than that recorded by the opinion pollsters. Doubtless, in some constituencies, this is true. But it seems unlikely to be enough. The ship will not go down with all hands but there will still, it seems, be few survivors. This remains a strange election. Ordinarily I’d say the straw-clutchers are hopelessly mistaken. The numbers do not lie. They are worth more than anecdotal evidence and gut-checking

In this week’s Spectator, out tomorrow, James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson have interviewed the Prime Minister David Cameron. He discusses why even his closest colleagues think he needs to show more passion and warns that Nicola Sturgeon wants the next government to be a ‘car crash’. Here is an extended preview…  David Cameron is sitting underneath a sign that reads quiet carriage, speaking loudly enough to be heard in the next carriage. He knows that even his closest allies are worried he may lose the election if he doesn’t show more passion, so he has been trying to compensate in recent days. He chops the air with his hands as he speaks, furrows

Complain all you like about the way the Tories are campaigning at the moment, but it’s getting the message across. The party has hit on the SNP, which is fascinating the media anyway, as the best line of attack to undermine Labour. Tory candidates report being pleasantly surprised by how much cut-through the Labour-SNP message is getting, while pollsters now say members of their focus groups are raising the issue unprompted. Focusing on the SNP may well have a number of serious side effects for the Tory party. It may reinforce the perception that they are a nasty, negative party. It may mean they do not give voters sufficient reason to

The campaign’s focus will swing back to Scotland today, with Nicola Sturgeon launching the SNP’s manifesto in Edinburgh. Ed Miliband is also heading north, to address the Scottish TUC and kick off Labour’s latest efforts to attack the Conservatives on the NHS. To help guide you through the melée of stories and spin, here is a summary of today’s main election stories. 1. Last chance to vote More important than any of the news stories, today marks the deadline for registering to vote on May 7. As the splash of today’s Daily Mirror puts it, ‘you can make a difference’. Forget talk of the same old parties with same old ideas, the

David Cameron’s inner circle are always keen to talk up the parallels between this campaign and 1992. This week, the winner of that election will enter the fray on their behalf. As I report in the Mail on Sunday, John Major will give a speech warning of the dangers to the Union itself if the United Kingdom ends up with a Labour government propped up by the SNP. The Tories hope that Major’s intervention will elevate this point above the usual party political knockabout. They also believe that a former Prime Minister speaking out will make voters pay attention; they were much struck by how much coverage Tony Blair’s speech

Jonathan Freedland has written a compelling column on the challenge that Ed Miliband will face to establish his legitimacy if he becomes Prime Minister despite Labour not having won the most seats or votes. But I suspect that whoever becomes the government after May the 8th will have difficulty in persuading everyone that they have a right to govern. The Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition could claim that 59 per cent of voters had backed its constituent parts. It also had a comfortable majority in the House of Commons with 364 out of 650 seats. Now, unless something dramatic happens, no governing combination is likely to have anything like that kind of

Labour’s efforts to stem the nationalist tide in Scotland aren’t working. Lord Ashcroft has polled eight marginals north of the border and the results confirm that the SNP is on course to conquer Scotland. In three Labour-held seats — East Renfrewshire, Glasgow South West, Paisley & Renfrewshire South — the SNP is set to take the seats with double digit swings. The Nats are 11 points ahead in Paisley, previously held by Douglas Alexander. In Jim Murphy’s seat of East Renfrewshire, a one point Labour lead in February has turned into a nine-point SNP lead. The news isn’t much better for the Liberal Democrats. The party is set to lose all four