- Guardian front page: Tory plan to slash £8bn benefits
- Miliband most searched for UK party leader on Google
- Ashcroft poll on marginal seats
- Ipsos Mori poll gives SNP 34-pt lead in Scotland
- Cameron does not challenge claim Tories would cut tax credits
- Balls says Tory tax credit cuts would hurt 4.5m families
- Read Andrew Sparrow’s summary of the morning
- Miliband interview with Russell Brand - Verdict
There was one thing the parties wanted to talk about today more than anything else, and that was the issue of taxation. As the final day of the penultimate week of the election campaign came to a draw, the leaders battled it out over who poses the greatest danger to “hardworking people”. It was all rather... taxing. Here’s how it panned out.
I know what needs to be done without reaching into the wallets of hard-working people and taking their money. So here’s the choice. You get me, you get that guarantee about taxes. You get Ed Miliband and you’ve got someone who attacked every single spending reduction and saving that we had to make.”
No government led by me as prime minister will cut the tax credits that working people rely on. Instead, we will raise them at least in line with inflation in every budget.
Zac Goldsmith: Russell brand is Rasputin crossed with dick van dyck. Kew hustings getting lively!
GUARDIAN: Revealed - Tory plan to slash £8bn benefits #tomorrowspaperstoday#BBCPaperspic.twitter.com/edSSXA9Oty
The Sun has given birth to this front page, endorsing the Conservatives in this election:
THE SUN: It's a Tory! #tomorrowspaperstoday#BBCPaperspic.twitter.com/UivDeNotxb
If you’re among the 20 per cent of voters still picking a side, don’t swallow the Left’s ridiculous propaganda about the Tories.
David Cameron and his party have not got everything right. They are too aloof. Wages are too low. But austerity was not designed by callous Tory toffs to punish the poor, as left-wingers childishly claim.
Here’s the real reason:
Because this time they are by far the best bet for the prosperity and happiness of millions of ordinary people who read The Sun.
Zac Goldsmith, the Tory candidate for Richmond Park and North Kingston, had this to add on Russell Brand according to the FT’s George Parker:
Zac Goldsmith: Russell brand is Rasputin crossed with dick van dyck. Kew hustings getting lively!
The prime minister acknowledged that people are hesitant about voting Conservative because they need to think hard after seven years of struggle in the wake of the recession.
But Cameron, who said he has “turned up the dial markedly” in recent days as a “passionate prime minister” hitting the election trail, added: “I think we will get there. But the reason it is taking time is, quite rightly, people want to have a good look and a good think.”
Senior figures in the Scottish Labour Party have demanded Jim Murphy resign after the election, according to the Telegraph.“A man who leads us to disaster in a general election has then got little prospect of leading us to enormous success in a Scottish election,” one Scottish Labour MP reportedly said.
The Conservatives have received praise from 90 tech entrepreneurs, who have written to the Guardian to say it would be bad for jobs, growth and innovation to “change course”. The company executives, who endorsed the Conservative-led government for supporting the tech industry, include Brent Hoberman, a co-founder of Lastminute.com and Made.com as well as a non-executive at Guardian Media Group; Andrew Fisher, executive chairman of Shazam; and Tim Steiner, chief executive and co-founder of Ocado.
Other signatories include David Cameron’s digital adviser and Tory peer, Baroness Joanna Shields; Alex Chesterman, chief executive and co-founder of Zoopla; and Holly Tucker, founder and president of Notonthehighstreet.
Labour is unhappy about the make-up of the audience at Thursday’s BBC Question Time event.
Party sources said it is another example of the BBC giving into Cameron’s demands, as 50% of the audience will be from government parties. The split is Conservative 25%, Labour 25%, Lib Dem 25% and don’t knows 25%.
Ed Miliband was on Classic FM earlier, where he told host Nick Ferrari about the importance of music education and his own struggle to learn the violin. Here are some of the key points from the interview:
Miliband said music education is “something that needs to be valued” and can be “an incredible liberation” for many children:
I think there’s a danger that in education at the moment we undervalue these kind of creative subjects. I think we undervalue artistic subjects. Music, for example can be an incredible liberation for lots of kids and it can bring out extraordinary talent. It is an important thing and it is something that needs to be valued.
For four years I schlepped away playing the violin and then at the age of 11 I said to my mum, ‘I’m really fed up with playing the violin and I’m not really very good at it – why are you forcing me to do it?’ And she said, ‘I don’t want you to be playing the violin, I don’t think you’re very good at the violin either, I thought it was because you wanted to do it,’ at which point I promptly gave it up. I don’t think I had any natural talent but I don’t think I practised very much, that’s my excuse.
I used to sneak off and watch Dallas and I remember my dad used to come down the stairs and I used to turn the telly off and sneak back in to my room, pretending I was doing my homework, not watching JR and Sue Ellen. So I suppose that was like my limited form of [rebellion].
She was in hiding in Poland during the Second World War, she was in a convent, you know, she was just extraordinary. So I think she never says this to me, but my intuition is that she sort of has gone through some tougher things, even tougher things than her two boys standing for leader of the Labour Party.
When I was 21 he had this heart bypass operation and he was in intensive care for weeks and it sort of didn’t go well. He was then quite frail.
[I would have said] how much I loved him, what a great dad he’d been, yes and how much I would miss him, you know.
I think the alternative is worse, which is not a free press. And I can answer back in the extreme cases – the Daily Mail, saying my dad hated Britain. My Dad loved Britain.
I remember that day actually, it was after the Labour Party Conference and one of the people who works for me rang me up and said, ‘Look I think you should see what the Mail is saying because it’s getting quite a lot of attention’. I was actually with my mum and she thought it was awful, and so far from the truth.
I was pretty sort of square – geeky, verging on the nerdy.… I’ll tell you the white trousers story, it wasn’t so much that I liked to wear white trousers, it’s that I was asked what I wore at the school disco when I was 16 or 17 and I said it was a particularly bad pair of white trousers and purple jumper.
What do the real voters think? We have 60 in five key seats giving their view throughout the campaign as part of our polling project with BritainThinks. They each have an app and are telling us what they think of stories as they crop up.
Nick Clegg was asked about laying down red lines in an interview on Sky News just now. “I think given the fragmented nature of politics and uncertain outcome of the election, it’s important people are crystal clear on what they’ll get if they vote for the Liberal Democrats,” he said.
He added that the Tory tax lock was a “bizarre stunt”. “If Cameron trusted the Chancellor why does he need to pass a law? Instead of giving with one hand and then taking with both hands, they should become clear with the public on the level of ideological cuts they want to impose,” he said.
Here’s an update on the top Miliband queries on Google today, which are all Russell Brand related:
1. Ed Miliband Russell Brand
2. Ed Miliband Russell Brand interview
3. Ed Miliband Russell Brand YouTube
4. The Trews Ed Miliband
5. Russell Brand Ed Miliband full interview
David Cameron has been condemned by a Christian group for a pledge to end “profoundly wrong” gay cure therapies, Pink News reports. Responding to a question asking if “it’s now time to bring forward legislation to ban reparative therapy for gay people”, the prime Minister told PinkNews:
As you would expect, I strongly disagree with anyone who holds those views. As a Government we’ve made it clear that we believe treating lesbian, gay and bisexual people as having an illness to be ‘cured’ is profoundly wrong. We are creating a country where people can be free to be themselves, and no-one should be pressured into being someone that they’re not.
Through the Department for Health, we secured the signing of a memorandum of understanding earlier this year between NHS England and a range of therapeutic organisations to protect people from the dangers of reparative therapy.
Ukip politician David Coburn has been indefinitely banned from Wikipedia after attempting to alter an article about himself 69 times in six days. Coburn, the Ukip MEP for Scotland, told the Guardian he had directed one of his staff to make the changes in order to clear the page of “garbage” and “nonsense”.
The idea that the supposedly unionist party is talking up the nationalist Scots in order to try and set Englishness against Scottishness I think is one of the most reprehensible things I’ve seen in modern British politics.
David Cameron should be ashamed of himself and I do think that people will look back and say this was one of the most unstatesmanlike, unprincipled and unpatriotic things we’ve seen from any political leader in Britain.
The Liberal Democrats have ruled out going into coalition with a party that refuses to commit to raising the tax-free threshold to £12,500 by the end of the next parliament.
Gordon Brown fears that the union will be more fragile than ever after this general election campaign, which he believes has become one of “two nationalisms”.
In a public lecture delivered at Glasgow University before a ceremony to confer the former prime minister with an honorary degree, he blamed the SNP for “playing the Scottish card” and the Conservatives for “playing the English card” over the campaign. In doing so, said Brown, “the issue of this election is not just the future of the UK but the very existence of the UK”.
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt has admitted the Coalition’s health reforms “wouldn’t have won an award for the most popular health policy in history”. Speaking on BBC Two’s Daily Politics election debate on health earlier this afternoon, Hunt acknowledged the changes to the NHS “weren’t very popular” but insisted the laws had been guided by the “right principle”.
I absolutely do defend getting money out of the back office and on to the front line. So I would have done those reforms, but I might have tried to communicate them in a different way because as I say they weren’t very popular.
What I warned them about was paying for the NHS by cutting social care and that is exactly what they have done and the care crisis we’re seeing in England now is the root cause of the A&E crisis.
I’m very clear. I changed Labour health policy when I was health secretary. I make no apology. I believe in the public NHS, in what it represents: people before profits. And I will fight for that principle. We used the private sector in a different way. It was used in a supporting role to bring down NHS waiting times in a planned capacity. They have used it to replace the public NHS.”
I don’t agree with politicians setting an arbitrary figure. These reforms gave that decision to doctors. I don’t believe politicians should be setting an upper limit or a lower limit. They should be listening to what doctors say. For the public it’s not public versus private. It’s good care versus bad care.
It’s about staff morale, it’s about the fact that a lot of staff are leaving, so GPs are retiring earlier, as you said fewer GPs are coming in. That’s also happening in the nursing profession as well. And replacing those people is becoming a real problem when they see the uncertainty and chaos in the system that they would be going into.
The Liberal Democrats are the only party with a credible plan to meet that 8 billion gap and we actually want to work with all other parties as soon as we are through this election to ensure that we achieve a new settlement not only for the NHS but for care as well.
The Green Party have sent me a statement ahead of Caroline Lucas’ forthcoming interview with Russell Brand. Adam McGibbon, the party’s campaign manager, said:
Russell Brand explained he was filming a Trews with, or about, all the political parties in order to try to engage more people in the general election. We were happy to take part, since we know green policies are very popular with his audience, and it was a key opportunity to make the case that voting matters. Politics needs to be made more accessible - Caroline has always stood up for a political system that isn’t hidden away behind closed doors in Parliament but is part of the communities it’s supposed to serve. It’s right that politicians are scrutinised by the media and if we’re serious about the importance of engaging young people in politics, and encouraging people to use their vote, then it should follow that we engage beyond traditional media and talk to, rather than ignore, those people who are frustrated by Westminster.
Ed Miliband is the most searched UK party leader on Google today, according to data shared with the Guardian.
Gordon Brown is receiving an honorary degree from Glasgow University now. Our Scotland reporter Libby Brooks is there.
Gordon Brown begins his lecture as he collects his honorary degree at Glasgow Uni #GE2015pic.twitter.com/1Bon8wmdeg
Gordon Brown: I've never seen a campaign where so much of the talk has been about insider deals and so little about quality of life #GE2015
A senior Ukip source has commented on Lord Ashcroft’s poll revealing Farage is on course to lose Thanet South. “The raw data puts us two points up and he’s not named as a candidate. You name the candidate of Nigel or Nick’s national status and that adds five points. I’m quite content that we’re well ahead. But it does show our get-out-the-vote operation has to be slick as hell.”
Rob Ford, the academic who co-authored a book on Ukip called Revolt on the Right, also tweeted that Thanet will likely be decided by get out the vote org.
Correction - Farage is ahead by 2% before turnout weighting and DK re-allocation. So Thanet will likely be decided by get out the vote org
Labour are unhappy about the audience make up for tomorrow’s leaders’ edition of Question Time, according to the Mirror’s political editor Jason Beattie.
Labour not happy with BBC for audience make up for QT. "Way it works is ridiculous, BBC have bent over backwards to Cameron," source says
A ComRes/ITV poll of the 50 most marginal Conservative-held seats show Cameron’s party is trailing Labour by three points collectively across the seats.
The study showed Labour currently stand at 40% in these key battleground seats, with the Conservatives on 37%. ComRes suggested that if those results were replicated on election day with a uniformswing across all these constituencies, it would see Labour win 40 of the 50 seats.
Arguably the boldest move of this preposterously defensive campaign so far – and that tells its own depressing story – the Brand/Miliband encounter is probably as close as we are going to get to what the Americans call an October Surprise. A splashy news event in the final stage of an election campaign deliberately designed to swing it one way. In the US in 1972, Henry Kissinger declared peace was at hand in the Vietnam war. In Britain in 2015, Miliband climbed the stairs to Brand’s flat and explained that, actually, with respect, the creation of the NHS had been quite an important thing. Don’t let anyone tell you it was the politics that got small.
A new ComRes poll of voting intentions in Labour/Conservative marginals puts Labour 3% ahead.
Voting intention of CON-LAB marginals (ComRes: LAB - 40% (+4) CON - 37% (-3) UKIP - 11% (+8) GRN - 5% (+4) LDEM - 5% (-12) +/- from 2010
LAB have 3% lead in CON's 50 most vulnerable seats to LAB according to ComRes/ITV poll. A 3.5% CON to LAB swing pic.twitter.com/bDXe1D5jiq
The 3.5% CON to LAB swing would just be enough to give LAB most seats even if all Scottish seats lost.
ComRes/ITV poll puts Labour 3% ahead (40%:37%) in Tory target marginals, forecasts Lab wd take 40 of 50 key seats.
The Guardian’s Anne Perkins was onboard Labour’s pink battle bus when it crashed. She’s just sent me this eyewitness account:
I didn’t think so much of the pink bus when it was launched. I thought it was sadly patronising and cliched to try to attract women’s attention to politics by using the colour pink. Mine was not a unique insight. The result of the derision that accompanied its departure is that it has been an unmitigated success, allowing Labour to take their case to thousands of women and always have something to talk about.
It was an unfortunate coincidence that having finally got a day out on the bus, l was on board at the moment of its first prang in 8,000 miles. I am pleased, if only to protect the unblemished reputation of Sue, the driver, to report IT WAS NOT HER FAULT.
Sue had just executed a flawless manoeuvre in a confined space to allow a car out of its parking space outside Mumsnet Towers in North London. She was reversing - under external guidance (the pink van being light on cameras, screens or even collision avoidance alarms) - back into her parking space at the time of the accident, caused by being a nanosecond late with the brake. She backed into some kind of protuberance, possibly a door handle, that was entirely invisible to her. In my view, that’s the fault of the person doing the guiding, not the driver.
Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg chose to criticise the Conservatives rather than Labour for their “po-faced piety” about Miliband’s decision to be interviewed by Brand.
He told reporters: “I’ve actually been interviewed by Russell Brand. I’ve got the T-shirt. Several months ago he interviewed me on drugs reform and it was a colourful, slightly zany, experience and honestly I find this po-faced piety from the Conservatives – I mean it’s a free country – is a insight into quite how mind-numbingly dull the Conservative party campaign has become that they’ve become so critical when anybody choses to do anything a little bit differently.”
Imran Hussain,director of policy at the Child Poverty Action Group, has been in touch regarding Michael Gove’s claims that the Conservatives have been able to save £21bn in the welfare budget while at the same time reducing inequality and child poverty (14:18). Hussain makes the point that Gove can only say this because the published official child poverty stats only go up to 2012-13 and don’t factor in more recent benefit/tax credit cuts - including those the government admits will increase child poverty - nor the introduction of the benefit cap or bedroom tax.
The IFS has published child poverty projections which factor in the coalition’s tax and benefit policies– they say child poverty will have risen by 400,000 by the end of this parliament by 700,000 overall by 2020.
Nick Clegg has responded to Lord Ashcroft’s latest poll showing the Lib Dem leader is set to lose his seat in Sheffield Hallam. Clegg insisted internal polling carried out by the Lib Dems showed he was “firmly ahead” and that Lord Ashcroft’s polls did not identify the candidates by name. “Just call me old-fashioned, but if you are going to try to work out how people are going to vote, ask them the question they are actually going to be asked on polling day,” he told reporters on the Lib Dem campaign bus.
Can the Tory five-year tax lock work? This reality-check blog by my colleague Jamie Grierson answers that question for you.
One of Britain’s leading economists, John Kay, who has run the Institute for Fiscal Studies and been a professor at Oxford University and the London Business School, said he was “not aware of this kind of legislation being introduced before”. But it is possible.
The coalition brought in similar changes to the law with welfare when they introduced a statutory 1% cap on annual increases in benefits.
Here’s a brief analysis by Ashcroft of his new polls. He writes that in Farage’s constituency of Thanet South, the Labour share is receding as the Tories make gains - which points to tactical voting by Labour supporters in order to keep Ukip out. In Sheffield Hallam meanwhile, Nick Clegg can rely on Conservative supporters to vote for him - 31% say they intend to.
In Thanet South I found the Conservatives two points ahead of UKIP, 34 per cent to 32 per cent, despite nearly nine out of ten voters there saying they have had campaign contact from the challengers. In my recent polls in the constituency I have found the Labour share drifting down as the Tory share edges up, suggesting that Labour supporters may be lending their vote to the Conservatives to stop Nigel Farage. However, the lead remains well within the margin of error and the seat could still go either way.
Labour’s lead in Sheffield Hallam is down to a single point, compared to two in March and three in November. While 30 per cent of 2010 Liberal Democrats in the seat say they intend to vote Labour next week, 31 per cent of 2010 Conservatives say they will now vote Lib Dem. Tory voters in the seat were also notably less likely than they are elsewhere to say that they rule out voting for Nick Clegg’s party. Their decisions could have more impact than most in determining the shape of the next government.
Lord Ashcroft has just released constituency polls for Sheffield Hallam, Thanet South and South Swindon.
In Nick Clegg’s constituency of Sheffield Hallam Labour leads by one point, down from a two-point Labour lead in March. In Thanet South, where Ukip leader Nigel Farage is standing, the Tories lead by two points, up from one since last November. And in Tory-held South Swindon, Cameron’s party leads by one point.
Lord Ashcroft has just published the results of new polling in three marginal constituencies: South Swindon, Thanet South, and Sheffield Hallam. It’s not good news for the Lib Dems or Ukip, as the polls reveal:
Voting intentions in my three latest constituency polls. See @ConHome, 4pm pic.twitter.com/bjxZPRdg7V
The gap narrows in Sheffield Hallam. Will Tory tactical voters step in to save Clegg? pic.twitter.com/ZLtD0mBUtw
Are Labour voters in Thanet South lending their votes to the Tories to stop Farage? pic.twitter.com/DKWYICkg8v
Still too close to call in South Swindon: pic.twitter.com/jktc3riLsU
Thousands of blank ballot papers for the election are missing after the van bringing them from the printers to Eastbourne was stolen, the Eastbourne Herald is reporting. Almost 250,000 blank papers for voters to fill in when they go to the polls to elect an MP and 27 new councillors on Eastbourne Borough Council are missing along with parliamentary ballot papers for Hastings. A council spokesperson said:
We have been informed that the printer’s van delivering the ballot papers for Eastbourne’s Parliamentary and Borough elections has been stolen along with all the contents.
Effectively, this means that all the ballot papers intended for use at polling stations on May 7 are in circulation and in the possession of persons unknown.
Scottish Tories are tanking, Sam Cam is out door-knocking, and Nick Clegg is melting by the Thames: here’s a link to the election photo highlights of the day.
Just in - shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper has revealed that Labour’s pink battle bus has been involved in some sort of accident. Well, I assume it was an accident and not an incident of momentary rage.
At last! Pink Bus baptised as a proper battle bus on @MumsnetTowers visit & here's the scars http://t.co/ZxeLJSRWgHpic.twitter.com/rKZtp8lKFH
David Cameron was on the Jeremy Vine show earlier this afternoon (see 12:29pm). A smart producer remixed this week’s Passion of Cameron “that pumps me up” moment with Ed Miliband’s sassy “hell yeah” retort from earlier in the campaign, which was then played to the Tory leader. Here’s the clip:
I did a remix of David Cameron's 'PUMPS ME UP' speech and we played it to the Prime Minister https://t.co/i4yL8iJHtd (@theJeremyVine)
Hello, I’m taking over from Andrew for the rest of the day. I’m on Twitter @nadiakhomami and, as always, I’ll be reading your comments below the line, so don’t be afraid to share your political wisdoms and direct me towards anything you think I’ve missed.
I’ve just seen that the New Statesman has endorsed Labour for the election. It’s hardly surprising from the historically left-of-centre publication, but what’s interesting is that while the magazine encourages its readers to vote for Labour, it does this rather begrudgingly, pointing out that Ed Miliband has failed to broaden his party’s appeal.
We endorsed Ed Miliband in the 2010 leadership contest as the candidate most committed to breaking with New Labour and to effecting far-reaching political and economic reform. Mr Miliband has remained true to this vision while keeping his party unified. He has performed well in the election campaign, growing in confidence as a communicator as his personal ratings have improved. But his five years as opposition leader have revealed severe limitations and strategic weaknesses. He has never succeeded in inspiring the electorate and has struggled to define himself. His narrow rhetorical and ideological focus on political economy has left him unable to reach the aspirational voters required to build a broad electoral coalition
Yet the programme put forward by Labour in this election is still one that is worthy of support.
It’s Ed Miliband 1, the Sun newspaper 0.
Wednesday's Sun front page: Monster Raving Labour Party #tomorrowspaperstoday#bbcpaperspic.twitter.com/yY6NdYp1ke
As infuriating as the Russell Brand Ego Show is, I have to say Miliband comes across pretty well in video. Not sucking up, argues back etc.
Cameron can mock all he likes, but Miliband's @rustyrockets interview was a very smart PR move. Got all the headlines & people talking.
No, but Miliband's audacity in trying it was impressive. Cameron's just sitting there, moaning & doing nothing. https://t.co/GC7VuceC4M
Miliband's interview with Brand an unambiguous net positive. In tight marginals, youth vote could determine the outcome.
I wish he hadn’t indulged this buffoon with abhorrent views, but—to be fair—Miliband stuck to his lines but no Sister Souljah moment either
I thought Russell Brand was a contrarian: he interviewed Miliband in a bloody kitchen.
Russell Brand's kitchen is an awful lot tidier than you'd think. Otherwise, his Miliband interview is as expected https://t.co/OZxp7BmL1o
Ed Miliband's mockney in the @rustyrockets interview is utterly bizarre, much as I too value the National Elf Service.
To be fair to Miliband, adapting your accent in conversation recognised by linguists as sign you’re being friendly pic.twitter.com/gv5acB3jt8
A Labour source has been in touch to point out that Ed Miliband’s line on the press in his interview with Russell Brand is rather different from that taken by Sajid Javid, the Conservative culture secretary, in an interview with the Daily Mail today.
Asked if the Tories would do any more to implement the Leveson report, Javid said no.
Asked if the Tories would try to force the Press to abide by a Leveson-approved system, Mr Javid said: ‘No, we won’t. But Labour will. It interferes with the freedom of the Press. It goes fundamentally against one of the Leveson principles, which is independent self-regulation. I think we have achieved what we set out to do. Everyone accepted the old system, the Press Complaints Commission, didn’t work. Our job is done as a government. It’s up to the Press.’
My colleague Ben Quinn has been covering the campaign in Clacton today. He has sent me this.
There’s a quieter, perhaps even slightly different, tone to the Ukip campaign which Douglas Carswell is waging to defend the Clacton seat which he held in a by-election just over six months ago following his defection from the Tories.
In the constituency widely regarded as the one which is most likely of all to result in a UKIP victory next week, the former Conservative MP was out this morning delivering leaflets in a traditionally strong Labour area where he seemed at his most passionate and comfortable discussing electoral and local government reform, rather than immigration.
Watching Douglas Carswell canvassing a Clacton Labour stronghold. Quieter to other Ukip fronts (+ more likely to win) pic.twitter.com/svPSEdg6O7
And here is the key exchange on Rupert Murdoch.
Ed Miliband made two points.
Brand: If Rupert Murdoch has this kind of power, this kind of media voice, if you are prime minister of Britain, can’t you just go, ‘Right, I’m prime minister now, we are passing some legislation that means that monopolies are going to be significantly broken up. So Rupert Murdoch, it’s been great, but now you can only own 10% or 15% of total media.’ Is that kind of thing a possibility? Because people want it.
Miliband: We said in our manifesto you’ve got to look at these issues of media ownership, and I’ve spoken out against Rupert Murdoch on phone hacking, and what happened to ordinary members of the public who were victims of phone hacking and intrusion and all of those things. The thing I would say to you about this, though, is these people are less powerful than they used to be. They are less powerful than they used to be. Media ownership really matters. It is something I care about. As I say, we have set out in our manifesto that we are going to definitely look at the issue.
Here is the key exchange where Russell Brand backs Ed Miliband over the need for credible change.
As you can see, it is almost a bit of a love-in.
Miliband:I think we are in a world where people are passed the idea of, this bloke comes along and he says vote for Ed Miliband and if I’m in Downing Street, on day one life is totally turned upside down. Firstly, I don’t think people want it. And, secondly, I don’t think people would believe it.
I think people want a sense that the country is run in a different way, that it is run for them again. I think the fundamental problem with this country is that people think it is run for somebody else and the somebody else is somebody probably right at the top of society. They have got the access, the influence, the power, and it is not run for them.
This is what Russell Brand said at the end of the interview.
I think we learnt a lot about Labour, we learnt a lot about Ed Miliband. It’s not a perfect interview but personally I found it a very interesting experience. And i think it says a lot about Ed Miliband that he understands the way the media works now, the way the country feels at the moment … that he was prepared to come and talk to us here at the Trews.
Michael Gove, the Conservative chief whip and former education secretary, said the claims from Ed Miliband that the Conservatives’ spending plans necessitate a cut in tax credits are based on “a mistake” in their figures and will not happen .
First of all, the figures on which they’re extrapolating this alleged cut don’t take account of the full £30bn of savings we’re going to make, including cracking down on tax evasion and tax avoidance. The second mistake is that it doesn’t take account of the introduction of universal credit overall.
The past is the best guide to the future. Our track record is the best way in which we can be judge and the fact that we’ve been able to save £21bn in the welfare budget and at the same time reduce inequality and reduce child poverty in this country is an indication of our values and our competence.
Brand is now offering his conclusions. He says it says a lot for Miliband that he was willing to come around and talk to Brand.
He does not quite say “Vote Labour”, but Brand did come reasonably close to an endorsement.
Miliband says he agrees with Brand. He is not offering “giddy euphoria”.
The Tories say this is as good as it gets, he says.
Miliband says he is not saying he will turn life upside down. That is not what people want, and people would not believe him if he promised it anyway.
But people want to know that the country is not just run for those at the top.
I completely agree with you, Ed. We don’t want some giddy, Yes we can euphoria ... People don’t want euphoria this time. People want security and stability and an end to this fear.
Q: What about Murdoch. Will you change media ownership?
Miliband says he has stood up to Murdoch. In its manifesto, Labour says it will look at this. Murdoch is “much less powerful than he used to be”. The British people have more sense than these papers think.
Q: At a geopolitical level politicians cannot wield influence.
That is not true, says Miliband.
Q: No one is proposing an alternative.
There is an alternative, says Miliband.
Q: We have lost £840bn to tax evasion since the bank bailout.
Miliband says it was right to bail out the banks. Remember the queues outside banks. It was right to protect people’s savings.
Q: How will that happen?
We reform the banks. We need banks, but they have to change.
Q: We see bankers committing fraud, and no one goes to prison.
Miliband asks Brand if he accepts his fundamental point.
I’m listening to it now. I will write it up as I listen, and then post the best quotes.
Here is the Russell Brand interview with Ed Miliband.
Today's Trews: Milibrand. https://t.co/gTf3i7TfjK#Milibrand
In an interview with the Evening Standard, David Cameron suggested that he could see Boris Johnson as prime minister. Talking about Johnson’s prospects, he said:
I haven’t got a specific job in mind but Boris has got a huge amount of talent and a great track record of running London. I think he can make a contribution at the highest level.
On the Jeremy Vine show David Cameron could not say how much the national debt was. Asked how much higher it is is now than it was in 2010, he replied:
Of course it’s higher. I haven’t got the figure off the top of my head. But every year you borrow more is a year in which you add to the national debt.
Almost 500 voters in Hull have been sent postal ballots missing two candidates, including the Labour incumbent, the Press Association reports.
Karl Turner, running to defend Kingston upon Hull East, said he had been told by the returning officer the issue involved the second tranche of postal ballots sent to 476 voters.
Green candidate Sarah Walpole is also missing from the ballot papers, all of which will be cancelled and reissued to voters in time for polling day.
Michael Gove, the Conservative chief whip, has just told the World at One that the Tories would not cut tax credits. That is not an assurance that David Cameron felt minded to give earlier today.
Gove said the Tories would freeze tax credits, but not cut them.
We are going to freeze them for two years. We are not going to cut them.
When William Hague was Conservative leader after 1997, he announced a plan to legislate to cut taxes as a share of national income regardless of the state of the economy. He was forced to drop the idea when Michael Portillo became shadow chancellor.
On the Daily Politics earlier, Hague was asked why the party was now resurrecting a similar idea. He was “ahead of [his] time” in 2000, he replied.
A Labour adviser has sent me a note clarifying some of the figures in Labour’s “Tories’ Secret Plan” document. (See 12.27pm.)
As I reported earlier, Labour is saying the tax credit cuts (£3.8bn) and child benefit cuts (£4.8bn) could be worth a total of £8.6bn.)
However, we are saying that it is more likely that they will take more from child benefit this time by rolling it into universal credit – which would save £4.8bn rather than £1.9bn. The Tories have repeatedly refused to rule out doing this in the last few weeks.
Martin McGuinness’s idea for a Northern Ireland only referendum on gay marriage equality is winning some surprising support today. The Ulster Unionist leader Mike Nesbitt said that “I can support a referendum in principle.”
We must remember that a referendum in the UK has no binding legal effect. Even if the public were to vote in favour of marriage equality, the Assembly would have to pass enabling legislation and as we have seen this week, the Assembly is incapable of making this necessary legal change.
The Conservatives have promised to introduce a law banning increases in income tax, VAT or national insurance over the next parliament. Columnists Hugh Muir and Owen Jones discuss whether it’s a good idea to imply that without a law tying their hands, the Tories wouldn’t keep to their promise. Tax pledges normally play well with the public – but will this one make any difference to the polls?
Cameron says the election is very close.
And that’s it. The Jeremy Vine interview is over.
Cameron says he was always planning to announce new policies during the campaign.
Q: And what about the “pumped up” rhetoric? Were you told to make it look as if you wanted the job?
Q: You have been making lots of unfunded commitments during the campaign. On inheritance tax, for example.
Cameron says that promise is funded. It would be funded by changes to pension tax relief for the wealthy.
Speaking after he took part in an energetic if uncoordinated exercise dance with pensioners in Yoker, in the Labour-held seat of Glasgow North West, Jim Murphy, the Scottish Labour leader, said:
If this poll is repeated on polling day, David Cameron will be uncorking the champagne because he might cling onto power, not because Scotland went out and voted Tory but because Scotland voted against the Labour party and made sure David Cameron was leader of the largest party.
We’re behind in the polls, there’s no point in denying that here in Scotland but we’ve got a huge amount of energy, a great amount of determination and look, a week is a long time in politics and we will keep working away.
[The] last thing Scotland needs is for the SNP to win this number of seats and for Scotland to be trapped again in a conversation about a referendum.
I don’t want to disappoint you but that’s not happening. We’re out campaigning every day and I will be campaigning in my seat later today, once I have recovered from the exhaustion of dancing here. We will win our seat here [and] I won’t lose my seat.
Jeremy Vine plays a clip from David Gauke, the Conservative Treasury minister, saying details of the planned £12bn welfare cuts would not be explained before the election.
Cameron says Labour are planning to run a deficit in perpetuity. That is absurd, he says. People running businesses, and families, know that you can run an overdraft for some of the time, but not all of the time.
Q: Ed Balls said this morning they would cut the deficit by 2020.
Jeremy Vine is now interviewing David Cameron on BBC Radio 2.
We have have very few proper press conferences from the main parties during this election but, to their credit, Labour held one today and they used it to deliver a well-aimed hit at the Tories. Since David Cameron and George Osborne have refused to say where they will cut the welfare budget, Labour decided to try an approach long-favoured by unscrupulous lobby correspondents and make up the figures for themselves.
No government led by me as prime minister will cut the tax credits that working people rely on.
Instead, we will raise them at least in line with inflation in every budget.
I know what needs to be done without reaching into the wallets of hard-working people and taking their money. So here’s the choice. You get me, you get that guarantee about taxes. You get Ed Miliband and you’ve got someone who attacked every single spending reduction and saving that we had to make.
Every single change to welfare he has opposed. You can only draw one conclusion from that. He would make a different cut. He would put up taxes, reach into your pay packet and cut your pay. That’s the choice. I say working people in this country have paid enough tax.
You’ve got millions more people who may well note vote who are not watching, frankly, who are not watching, not listening and are planning not to vote and therefore I will do anything and engage with anyone to try and persuade people to vote ...
Russell Brand is somebody who has in the past expressed that view that voting doesn’t change anything, I believe voting is the thing that changes thing. Look at the history.
On the Margaret Hodge question, these were shares which were transferred by her family out of Germany before the second world war. That is the history of this. And Margaret has brought those shares onshore and paid the appropriate tax. I think she’s done the right thing.
The Conservatives’ tax lock law “could cause monumental damage if it has to be defied in the event of a deterioration of the economy”, according to an analyst quoted by Bloomberg Business.
Steve Barrow, head of G-10 strategy at Standard Bank, said in a research note that such a law showed the Conservatives were “the more desperate party” as the general election draws closer.
George Osborne, now chancellor of the exchequer, told Parliament at the time: “No other Chancellor in the long history of the office has felt the need to pass a law in order to convince people that he has the political will to implement his own budget.”
He also pointed out that the law represented “a constitutional first” by imposing no legal sanction if the goals were missed. The Conservatives confirmed Wednesday that their own proposed law would likewise lack any punishment for those breaking it.
The latest STV News poll suggests that the SNP is set to take every one of Scotland’s 59 Westminster seats. Based on the latest Ipsos-Mori findings, which put the SNP at 54%, up two points since January, and Labour down 4 points to 20%, the Electoral Calculus website indicates that Nicola Sturgeon’s party will win every seat, while other calculators give Labour and the Liberal Democrats one seat each.
At a campaign event in Glasgow, Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy told my colleague Severin Carrell that David Cameron would be “uncorking the champagne” if the poll was repeating on 7 May.
.@JimForScotland says @David_Cameron"will be uncorking the champagne" if @STVNews 54% SNP poll is repeated at #GE2015: he'll beat @UKLabour
Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, has responded to the latest Scottish poll.
Forget polls - only votes win elections. The more seats @theSNP win, the stronger Scotland will be. Let's keep working hard. #GE15#voteSNP
A new Ipsos Mori poll gives the SNP a 34-point lead in Scotland. And it shows Labour just 3 points ahead of the Tories.
Our latest #GE2015 poll for @STVNews– SNP 54% (+2), Lab 20 (-4), Cons 17% (+5), LD 5% (+1), Green 2% (-2). Tables on our website shortly.
If this 54 SNP/20 Lab MORI poll happens, #SNP wld win 58/59 seats in Scotland on uniform swing http://t.co/rgwnBFkyMipic.twitter.com/nswoRqwpNu
One trend where polls have been consistent for months – across phone polls, internet surveys and constituency polling – is Scotland.
Nicola Sturgeon’s party remains on course to winning nearly all of Scotland’s 59 seats. In fact, if anything, support for the SNP is increasing. The latest Ipsos Mori poll has the party on 54%.
More evidence total victory for SNP in Scotland. Our latest poll for @STV News – SNP 54% (+2), Lab 20 (-4), Cons 17% (+5), LD 5% (+1)!
Q: Was it really necessary to bring in Paul Greengrass, ie Hollywood, to do a Labour party political broadcast?
Miliband says Greengrass is a friend. He has known him for some years. Greengrass offered to help. But Miliband does not think Matt Damon has anything to worry about.
Q: Will you be bullied by Nicola Sturgeon if you are prime minister?
There is not going to be a Labour/SNP government, says Miliband.
Q: Why won’t you promise an extra £8bn for the NHS?
Miliband says he will only make promises he can keep.
On ITV’s This Morning Ed Miliband defends his decision to speak to Russell Brand. A lot of politicians do not like moving outside their “comfort zone”. They will only engage with people interested in politics. But he says he thinks it is important to engage with people who are not interested too.
Ed Miliband is about to be interviewed on ITV’s This Morning.
I will be keeping an eye on it, and posting the highlights, although these interviews haven’t always been essential viewing.
The Liberal Democrats have today set out their plans to extend the free school meals programme - which they introduced in September 2014 to give all four-to-seven-year-olds a free meal at lunch times - to all primary school children, so four-to-11-year-olds. The party says the plans will benefit 1.9m children and save parents around £400 per child per year.
Nicola Sturgeon has delivered another stirring speech at a women’s business breakfast in Glasgow, urging voters across the country to unite in supporting the SNP in making Scotland’s voice heard in Westminster, and changing the fundamental nature of that parliament itself.
Saying that she was sending a message to those who voted no as well as yes in the referendum, and those who had never voted for the SNP previously as well as long-time supporters, Sturgeon said:
On May 7th we can seize this historic moment to shift the balance of power from the corridors of Westminster to the streets of Scotland. By voting SNP, we can make our nation’s voice heard like never before. Together we can unite to make Scotland better.
The Cameron speech and Q&A is now over.
I will post a summary of the key points from the Labour and Tory events soon.
Damian McBride, Gordon Brown’s former spin doctor and a former Treasury official, has written a blog saying it is wrong for the Tories to say there would be no tax rises under them in the next parliament. A range of tax increases, on things like fuel and tobacco, are already planned, he writes.
He also says the Tory plan, announced today, not to extend the scope of VAT is a mistake.
If you want a good indicator of the fact that this ‘announcement’ has been cobbled together at the last minute by a Tory leadership in the grip of a giant wobble, look no further than the throwaway promise that there will be ‘no extension in the scope of VAT’. That’s been thrown in to avoid accusations that they’re planning a raid on the VAT zero rates having forgotten to pledge their protection in the Tory manifesto. But it’s clearly been written by someone who knows nothing about VAT. The scope of VAT is constantly changing as new products and services come onto the market and a decision needs to be taken on their VAT treatment or as unscrupulous tax accountants come up with ingenious ways to avoid the tax and legislation is required to counteract them. Saying there will be ‘no extension’ in the scope of VAT is both financially illiterate and fiscally irresponsible, but I guess on that charge, the Tories currently think: in for a penny ….
Q: If you are prime minister, will you resign if you fail to deliver this tax lock within 100 days?
Cameron says this is what the Conservatives will deliver. He knows that taxes can be cut.
Cameron is now taking questions from audience members, not journalists. The first isn’t really a question, but a rant about Mike O’Brien, the Labour candidate for North Warwickshire and Bedworth.
Q: Five years ago you promised not to put up VAT. But you did. Is this pledge designed to ensure you don’t break your promise again?
Cameron says he can make this pledge because he has seen the books. He has been prime minister for five years.
Cameron is now taking questions.
Q: Why should people trust you on tax, if you say you need to pass a law on this?
Back in Birmingham, Cameron is in full pumped up mode. There is one thing he want to “get of [his] chest”, he says. It is the fact that while he has been clearing up the economic mess left by Labour, they have been on the sidelines criticising. It is like trying to put out a fire and having the arsonist who started it next to you criticising you.
Michael Crick from Channel 4 News posted this on Twitter after the Labour press conference.
Ed Miliband asked by invited member of Labour audience about Margaret Hodge's offshore tax arrangements. Passes Q, and others, to Ed Balls
BBC News and Sky have given up their coverage of the Cameron speech, but there is a live feed on the BBC website. I will be monitoring it, and posting the highlights.
Cameron says he is today in a position to promise that the Tories would legislate to block increases in income tax, national insurance and VAT.
He can say this because he has seen the books, he says.
David Cameron is speaking in Birmingham now.
From what I’ve heard, it sounds like a fairly standard stump speech. But he includes a new attack on the SNP, quoting from an SNP candidate who said if he were elected to Westminster, he would be able to take on the enemy.
A hung parliament could mean punishing, all-night sittings and constant media scrutiny, but I would relish the chance to take Scotland’s fight to the enemy camp.
Q: What did you learn from meeting Russell Brand?
Miliband says 7m people are not registered to vote. That is shocking. And there are more people who will not vote.
Q: Does your promise not to raise national insurance include a promise not to raise the ceiling?
Yes, says Balls. He says Labour is not going to change national insurance. All its plans are paid for.
Q: Can you guarantee to approving the maingate decision on Trident early in 2016, which would be before the Holyrood election?
Miliband says Labour will do whatever it takes to keep Britain safe. The warning from former defence chiefs today needs to be taken seriously.
Q: Why should people trust you when you won’t say what taxes you would raise?
Milband says Labour has said what taxes it would raise.
Q: Don’t the Tory plans today for a tax lock blow a hole in your analysis?
No, says Balls. People will not believe the Tories.
Miliband is now taking questions from journalists.
Q: If you are criticising the Tories for not saying where they will cut, shouldn’t you say more about the cuts you would make?
The Labour document also claims that the Tories have made unfunded spending commitments worth almost £7bn during the election campaign. Here is the key passage.
Q: Will Labour stop free schools that are being planned?
Miliband says Labour will not close existing free schools.
Miliband says the bedroom tax is “a horrendous policy that does not even work”.
Q: Do you support the right to buy?
Miliband says he supports the principle of right to buy because he thinks home ownership is a good thing.
Here is more from the Labour documents.
This is what it says about the Tory plans for welfare. It is written as a spoof Tory memo (so “we” refers to the Tories).
Our plans mean we will have to cut Tax Credits again. If, as in this parliament, we make just under a third of our welfare savings from Tax Credits, this will mean cutting £3.4 billion from Tax Credits over and above the cuts we have already set out. This would mean:
We will also have to cut Child Benefit. As you know, we plan to do this by incorporating it into Universal Credit. People have tried to get this out of us, but we have successfully avoided confirming this is our plan. This would save around £4.8 billion, meaning:
Q: How will the mansion tax work? Will basic rate tax payers have to pay?
Ed Balls says basic rate taxpayers will be able to defer paying the mansion tax until their home is sold. They will not have to move out.
The Labour document is presented as a spoof internal Tory memo.
Our public position is that we are planning a consolidation of £30 billion in the next Parliament, with £13 billion from departmental savings.
As you know, this was never the complete picture. After coming under pressure and rushing out our unfunded commitments in the campaign, the state of play is now even more difficult.
The panel are now taking questions.
Ed Miliband says they will start with questions from the invited audience, before taking questions from journalists.
At the Labour press conference Rachel Reeves, the shadow work and pensions secretary, is speaking now.
She says the Tories cut child benefit and tax credits after the 2010 election.
Back to the Labour press conference, where Ball is saying that £5.8bn would be cut from tax credits under the Tory plans.
Jim Murphy, the Scottish Labour leader, has insisted he plans to remain Labour MP for East Renfrewshire for a full five years if he defies the polls and holds his seat next week. A Lord Ashcroft poll suggested last week that the SNP had taken a 9 point lead over Murphy, on a 26.5% swing, in a seat where previously the Tories were his fiercest competitors.
Balls says David Cameron said before the 2010 that it was “a lie” to say that the Tories would cut tax credits.
But they did, he says.
And here is the Labour poster about the plans.
Extreme Tory plans to slash benefit spending by £12 billion will mean a raid of £3.8 billion on tax credits. pic.twitter.com/aai36GmWNq
Here is the Labour briefing on what Labour is calling “the Tories’ secret plan” (pdf).
Balls says the IFS said recently the Tories were at risk of giving a misleading impression of what the cuts would look like. They were right.
Balls is quoting Robert Chote, head of the Office for Budget Responsibility, and Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, about the Tories plannning remarkably deep cuts.
And he repeats the line he used in his Today interview. People understand the phrase “once bitten, twice shy”, he says.
The reality of those cuts is devastating.
Miliband hands over to Ed Balls, who, he says, is giving a presentation on the Tories’ secret plans.
The Tories would cut spending by £58bn, Balls says.
Miliband says he has a “tough but balanced” plan to cut the deficit every years.
But he will protect family budgets too, he says.
Miliband is now on the Tory threat to family finances.
He says Labour is releasing figures showing that 7.5m families would lose out under planned Tory cuts. They would lose £760 each on average.
Ed Milband has just started his speech at the Labour event this morning.
There is a live feed on the BBC website.
It is 20 years to the day since Tony Blair won the vote on changing Clause 4 of Labour’s constitution. My colleague Jason Rodrigues has written about it on our archive blog.
Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, has given several interviews this morning, including the Today one. If you believe in the theory that how a politician sounds is a good guide to who is winning an election - and there are worse ways of reading a campaign - then Labour are doing well, because Balls certainly sounded remarkably chipper. One obvious point to make about the Conservative tax lock plan is that is not the move one would expect from a party confident, or even half-confident, of winning an election. Politicians who expect to run the Treasury for the next five years are loath to limit their options (which partly explains the George Osborne quote from 2009 - see 8.08am.)
This is the most last-minute desperate gimmick I have seen in an election in a very long time. These promises were made by David Cameron in his manifesto. He has decided three weeks on, people aren’t believing them, he is going to try again.
But the reason is people remember before the last election he promised not to raise VAT and he raised it and he said it was a ‘lie’ that he would cut tax credits and then he cut tax credits for millions of families in our country.
I don’t think he was sucking up to him. I think he was challenging him hard ...
I think in an election campaign we have to go out and talk to everybody and we want young people who might be thinking ‘am I going to vote?’ think ‘well, actually there is a big choice.’ If Russell Brand could be persuaded not to go around telling everybody not to vote instead to say ‘there is a choice here’ then that will be a good thing.
What do the real voters think? We have 60 in five key seats giving their view throughout the campaign as part of our polling project with BritainThinks. They each have an app and are telling us what they think of stories and key issues as they crop up.
Q: Isn’t it a bit demeaning for Ed Miliband to be interviewed by “that great political philosopher” Russell Brand?
Balls says politicians should give interviews to may people.
Balls says the recovery is not working for ordinary people. There are 1.8m zero hours contracts.
Q: And 60% of people want to be one one.
Balls says he wants to get a surplus by 2019-20.
Q: Where will the money come from?
Q: When will you get rid of the deficit?
Balls says he will get rid of the current deficit by 2019-20. But he would like to do that earlier.
Balls says the Tories will cut welfare by £12bn.
Labour will increase tax credits, at least in line with inflation. The Tories will cut them, affecting 4.5m people.
John Humphrys is interviewing Ed Balls.
Q: Did you see this tax lock law coming?
There is a good phrase in the English language: ‘once bitten, twice shy’.
Good morning. I’m taking over from Claire.
Ed Balls will be on the Today programme shortly.
No other chancellor in the long history of the office has felt the need to pass a law in order to convince people that he has the political will to implement his own Budget. As one commentator observed this week, there are only two conclusions. Either the chancellor has lost confidence in himself to stick to his resolution, and is, so to speak, asking the police to help him, or he fears that everyone else has lost confidence in his ability to keep his word, but hopes that they might believe in the statute book if not in him. Neither is much of a recommendation for the chancellor of the day.
I’m just about to hand over to Andrew Sparrow but can’t resist sharing this gleeful moment for the Guardian’s Scotland reporter Libby Brooks on Twitter yesterday:
@libby_brooks mmm...what can I say??
@libby_brooks sorry!
My colleague Amelia Gentleman has written an excellent piece on the immigration debate and the election campaign in Wolverhampton.
In the former seat of Enoch Powell, she finds, immigration is not the issue on most voters’ minds:
Even in the local Ukip campaign headquarters, the single pledge framed and hung on the wall is not about immigration. Instead it promises: “We will work to provide more free parking for the high street.”
The Mirror reports this morning that work and pensions secretary – and tub-thumper for the £12bn welfare cuts – Iain Duncan Smith failed to turn up to his own constituency hustings. It reports:
Voters from Iain Duncan Smith’s constituency last night called for him to be sanctioned – with his MP’s salary suspended – for failing to show up at his local hustings.
Candidates from six other parties – Labour, Green, Lib Dem, Class War, TUSC and Ukip – managed to make the event at Woodford Memorial Hall. But the sitting MP failed to show up in his constituency of Chingford and Woodford Green in north London.
My colleague Larry Elliott has this story on Paul Krugman, a Nobel prize-winning US economist, who has attacked Conservative austerity measures – and Labour’s limp response. Krugman says:
Cameron is campaigning largely on a spurious claim to have ‘rescued’ the British economy – and promising, if he stays in power, to continue making substantial cuts in the years ahead.
Labour, sad to say, are echoing that position. So both major parties are in effect promising a new round of austerity that might well hold back a recovery that has, so far, come nowhere near to making up the ground lost during the recession and the initial phase of austerity.”
William Hague has been on the Today programme. He’s not standing in this election, of course, but is nonetheless very pleased about Cameron’s proposed tax lock, he tells Radio 4’s Justin Webb.
And a lock is a world away from a pledge, it turns out. It is “categoric legislation … a clear guarantee”:
The difference is to put it into the law of the land … [It] not only underlines the commitment but makes it more difficult to change that commitment.
This [tax] is at the heart of what parliamentary votes take place about.
The difference now, of course, is that five years ago we were dealing with a huge deficit – almost Greek – which has now been halved.
Hague: One or the reasons we’ve been bringing down the deficit … is to make the British economy more resilient in the event of unexpected crises.
That resilience means that if there are further unforeseen crises … the economy is in a far stronger position.
Hague: We have aid a great deal about what we will do on benefits [he mentions the two-year freeze on working-age benefits].
What we’ve set out is more detail than any other party and we’ve got the track record to go with it.
Conservative MPs would always vote to secure the national interest.
We don’t know what a Labour government would put to the Commons.
The final day of the penultimate week of the election campaign and here we are again: liveblogging all the developments from 7am till even the politicians turn in for the night.
I’m Claire Phipps, starting the blog this morning, before handing over to Andrew Sparrow to take you through the day. We’re on Twitter, @Claire_Phipps and @AndrewSparrow, so please come and share your thoughts there or in the comments below.
This is the clearest choice on the economy for a generation. And beyond the plain facts, it also comes down to gut instinct.
When you’re standing in the polling booth, ask yourself: on the things that matter in your life, who do you really trust?
It says something about the scepticism of electorate if politicians have to pledge new law guaranteeing something they promised to do anyway
No government led by me will cut the tax credits that working people rely on while giving tax breaks to the richest.
Instead, a Labour government will raise them at least in line with inflation in every budget.
It doesn't matter which media lunatic a party leader meets with after dark - as long as they encourage others to vote pic.twitter.com/nqXgF0243I
Miliband is seeking to shift up a gear in his election campaign with the broadcast of a surprise conversation with comedian Russell Brand about the value of voting and a warning about the threat to living standards posed by Conservative spending cuts.
More than two years after first announcing a desire to cut £12bn from the social security budget in 2017–18, the Conservatives have provided details of just a 10th of this.
It is hard to see how such savings could be achieved without sharp reductions in the generosity of, or eligibility to, one or more of child benefit, disability benefits, housing benefit and tax credits.
Those sneering at Miliband for being interviewed by a much-followed figure should ask themselves: what have I done to engage disillusioned young people who feel politics has little to offer?
If the answer is very little, or nothing, then perhaps a bit of humility is in order. It is a matter of deep concern that so many people have so little faith in democracy.
He is exasperated with the perception that he’s lazy or suffers from a sense of entitlement. He feels he has worked flat-out this year and, since the campaign began, has been visiting five or six constituencies a day, flying across the Pennines and flogging down the M5 in his battlebus.
But he has been trying to pace himself because he hates getting overtired –forgetting his football team was a clanger caused by excessively long days.
Labour could, during the closing stages of the campaign, plausibly argue that having a Scottish MP as foreign secretary offers a potentially more influential voice for the country at Westminster than a bulked-up bloc of backbench SNP MPs ever would.
Social v Press preview of @rustyrockets Miliband has 90k views. Sun frontpage mocking 25 RTs https://t.co/jcEjpN2Dmdhttps://t.co/4sr0HhI40m
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