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The general election campaign has entered the final stretch and each day between now and polling day, we’ll be producing a short lunchtime podcast looking at the day’s campaign developments. Today, Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss Labour’s new housing pledges, the 5,000 small businesses backing the Tories, the hysterical talk of the SNP threat — as well as the unfathomable state of the opinion polls. You can subscribe to the View from 22 through iTunes and have it delivered to your computer or iPhone every week, or you can use the player below:

Peter Mandelson and Ed Miliband appeared to have been undergoing a certain rapprochement during this campaign. Mandelson declared recently that Miliband has ‘way exceeded my expectations‘. But a briefing note from Global Counsel, of which Mandelson is chairman, is bound to be seized on by the Tories. The note is entitled ‘Why the SNP will win whatever happens on May 7th’ and goes on to discuss what might happen if the Nationalists end up holding the balance of power in a hung parliament. It warns that ‘English dissatisfaction is likely to grow over time with the consequences of Labour government being sustained in power by the SNP’. It also predicts

With just under two weeks to go until polling day, the promises, threats and reassurances will kick up a notch as we enter the final stretch of the campaign. The Tories have another 5,000 businesses to back up their case for reelection, while Labour is turning to its favourite weapon of market intervention towards housing. To help guide you through the melée of stories and spin, here is a summary of today’s main election stories. 1. Building for Britain The Tories have tried to paint themselves as the party of home ownership throughout this campaign. But Labour is attempting to seize that mantle with several new policies on housing today.

This morning when George Osborne defended the way the Tories were fighting the election campaign, there was something slightly odd about what he said in response to John Humphrys’ first question: ‘We’re two weeks to go to this election and it’s coming down to a very clear choice on the economy, and on 8 May we can either get straight back to work with a clear plan that is delivering for our country or we face this deeply unstable Miliband/SNP government committed to much more borrowing, and that leads to a dangerous cocktail which increasingly, international investors say will lead to higher mortgage rates, higher taxes and lost jobs, and

Ukip kicked off St George’s Day by pledging to make today a national holiday. Although early morning press conferences have been abandoned by the other political parties, Ukip turned out the media bright and early to talk about patriotism and promised to make St George’s and St David’s Day national holidays. The party’s cultural spokesman Peter Whittle said they wanted to tackle the ‘cultural self-loathing’ Ukip believes has developed over Englishness. It was pointed out to Whittle that St George was an immigrant himself — from Turkey — but Ukip apparently wouldn’t have a problem with him entering Britain because he would be a ‘skilled migrant’, being able to slay

On the Sunday Politics just now, Angela Eagle shifted Labour’s position on what it would do in the event of a hung parliament. Previously, Labour has insisted that if it was a minority government it would simply propose a Queen’s Speech and dare the other parties, and in particular the SNP to vote it down. listen to ‘Angela Eagle: we’d speak to any party to get a Queen’s speech through’ on audioBoom But Eagle told Andrew Neil that in the event of a hung parliament Labour ‘would speak to any party that has got representation in the House of Commons in order to try to build a majority for a

David Cameron has just delivered his feistiest performance of the election campaign yet. In a combative interview with Andrew Marr, the Tory leader repeatedly described the prospect of a Labour government propped up by the SNP as ‘frightening’, telling English voters that the SNP wouldn’t ‘care’ about them and their needs. He implicitly warned that SNP MPs supporting a Labour government would result in less money for English constituencies. He had been given this opening by Nicola Sturgeon, who in her interview had made clear how the SNP would use the fixed term parliament act to give them maximum influence on a Labour government. Her point was that the fixed term

Most politicians are having a miserable election, but not so Nicola Sturgeon. Her party is terrifying Labour in Scotland, she has put in very strong performances in the TV debates, and whoever is in government in Westminster from May will face trouble from Sturgeon. The forecasters now put the SNP on course to win between 40 and 50 of Scotland’s 59 seats; Scotland is on the cusp of the sharpest change of political direction in her democratic history. But in order to sustain that momentum to polling day, Sturgeon needs to reassure nervous former ‘no’ voters who are considering voting SNP in order to exert the sort of left-wing pressure on Labour