Afternoon summary
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The Lib Dems and and SNP have clashed over plans for future spending on the NHS. As the Press Association reports, The SNP claim their anti-austerity plan would see Scotland’s health budget rise by a total of £2bn by 2020. But the Lib Dems say the SNP’s desire to increase public spending across the UK over the next five years “threatens to wreck NHS funding”. The Scottish Lib Dem party president Sir Malcolm Bruce said:
The SNP plan to borrow £180bn to pay for their promises threatens to wreck NHS funding. The SNP plan to take on more debt would mean £3.1bn extra in interest payments every year. That eats into the money available for health.
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David Cameron has tweeted a picture of the note Liam Byrne, the former Labour chief secretary to the Treasury, left for his successor saying there was no money.
Last night I reminded everyone of how shameless Labour are about the state they left our finances in. #leadersdebate pic.twitter.com/tVXkJchy4e
— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) April 3, 2015
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Steve Fisher, the Oxford academic who produces a weekly election results forecast for Elections Etc, using a complicated model looking at current polling and who polls shift before an election, has published his latest update.
Here are his latest seat forecasts.
Con: 300 (257– 346)
Lab: 258 (215 – 298)
LD: 20 (11 – 30)
SNP: 47 (36 – 55)
PC: 3 (2 – 3)
UKIP: 5 (4 – 5)
Grn: 1
And here is an extract from his commentary.
Our first update since the official start of the campaign finds the Conservatives having moved ahead in the polls, by a nose. Our polling average now has them leading Labour by a point — 34%-33% — having been locked together on 33% apiece for the past month. (All the polls so far were before last night’s debate.)
This has boosted the Tories’ chances: our model now gives them a 79% chance of winning the most votes and a 79% chance of winning the most seats (both up from 74% last week). The probability of a Conservative majority is up to 20% (from 16%), while Labour’s hopes of a majority are virtually gone (our model gives them less than a 0.5% chance of one). The chances of a hung parliament are still high, at 80% (down slightly from 83%).
Our central forecast is for a hung parliament with the Conservatives clearly the largest party, with 35% of the vote and 300 seats to 32% and 258 for Labour.
Updated
Nicola Sturgeon is to address an anti-Trident rally in Glasgow tomorrow. Patrick Harvie, the co-convenor of the Scottish Green party, who is also speaking at the event, said the protesters wanted to make it Trident election issue.
We have a chance to send a strong message that by re-purposing our military and adapting to the threats of the 21st century we can leave the Cold War mentality behind and free up funds to create the jobs our society needs. Scotland is a nation of peace not international aggression. Those advocating renewal of Trident should think carefully how £100bn could transform our communities.
Ed Miliband has been buying fish and chips for the journalists travelling with him in Blackpool ...
While David Cameron has been ticking a baby ...
And Nicola Sturgeon has been photographed with a little one too.
Who won the debates? Five alternative assessments
We’ve already published plenty of information about who won the leaders’ debate. (See 10.26am and 1.42pm.) But the attraction of a multi-party encounter is that it allows for multiple interpretations. Here are five more.
They are all based on grouping the seven leaders into certain combinations. To arrive at an overall score, I have used the average figures for what all seven leaders got in the four opinion polls released overnight (see 7.01am), and then adjusted accordingly. Some assessments are probably more useful than others, but I will post them here anyway in case they provide fresh insight.
1 - Men beat women
Men: 18.5% on average (ie, the combination of the figures for David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nigel Farage and Nick Clegg, divided by four)
Women: 9%
This seems like a barmy conclusion because it is completely counter to the verdict produced by those who have been measuring Twitter sentiment. (See 10.26am.) But there is a difference between posting a positive tweet about someone, and telling a pollster that you thought they won. This figure serves as a reminder that, although Nicola Sturgeon made a very positive impression in the debate, the polls suggest Natalie Bennett and Leanne Wood didn’t.
2 - The right beat the left
Left: 12.25% (with Miliband, Sturgeon and Bennett counting as left)
Right: 21.5% (Cameron and Farage alone) or 17.3% (if Clegg is included as on the right)
Again, the focus on Sturgeon’s impressive performance has overshadowed the extent to which other candidates on the left polled badly.
3 - Parties of government beat parties outside government
Leaders in government: 17% (Cameron, Clegg and Sturgeon)
Leaders out of government: 12.5%
4 - Nationalists beat non-nationalists - just
Nationalists: 14.6% (Sturgeon, Wood and Farage, who is effectively an English nationalist)
Non-nationalists: 14.25%
Bracketing the SNP and Plaid Cymru with Ukip is, of course, questionable, because the SNP and Plaid Cymru are progressive, pro-European parties who are quite different from Ukip in many respects. But there are parallels too, and so in some respects grouping them together could be helpful. It is also worth pointing out that, were it not for the inclusion of Wood, the nationalists would have beaten the non-nationalists, and the non-Londoners beaten the Londoners, quite easily.
5 - Non-Londoners beat Londoners - just
Non-Londoners: 14.6% (Sturgeon, Wood and Farage, who all live outside London.
Londoners: 14.25% (Cameron, Miliband, Clegg and Bennett all have their main home in London, even though the first three also have constituency homes outside London.
Updated
The Home Office said it would introduce exit checks at the borders from April. But it has emerged that the new system is being phased in gradually.
David Hanson, the shadow immigration minister, has put out a statement claiming this is a symptom of Tory “incompetence”.
The Tories have failed to deliver on their promise of full exit checks, and having left it so late companies are rightly concerned about implementation. People will now be worried that the Tories’ incompetence will lead to yet more queues and chaos at our borders.
While information will be provided to the government about who is booked on a ferry or Eurotunnel, we now know the Tories won’t be checking exits because they left it too late to have a robust system in place. Instead exit checks will be ‘phased’ with no timetable on when they will be complete and no timetable on when this information will be matched with visa data – which is how we really know if someone has left.
Further to my post about Alex Salmond (see 2.59pm), a reader points out that, even if I can’t find anyone with a tattoo of David Cameron or Ed Miliband on their leg, Boris Johnson has inspired this level of devotion in at least one fan.
According to the Telegraph, Nigel Farage’s decision to say that foreigners who are HIV positive should not be treated by the NHS was part of a deliberate “shock and awful” strategy to mobilise the Ukip core vote.
Privately, insiders conceded the comments were “a bit spicy” but they were vindicated by a half-time ComRes/ITV News poll showing 24 per cent of voters giving Mr Farage the lead in the debate.
“It was a core vote message. It wasn’t to reach out to floating voters. We need to mobilise our base and that’s what he did,” said one senior source. “Call it shock and awe, or call it shock and awful.”
The Telegraph also says that Douglas Carswell, the Tory MP who defected to Ukip, has refused to endorse Farage’s comments. Carswell is on the liberal wing of Ukip and his father was a pioneering Aids/HIV doctor in Africa.
Alex Salmond, the former SNP leader, said Nicola Sturgeon “hammered” David Cameron in the debate last night.
Asked about a claim by Michael Gove, the Conservative chief whip, that a Labour/SNP alliance would be a “lethal cocktail”, Salmond replied:
I think Michael Gove is showing all the signs of panic and the distress that the prime minister was showing in the debate last night when he was hammered by Nicola Sturgeon ... I think the first minister is wiping the floor with the Westminster old boys’ network.
Salmond was campaigning in Kircaldy where he also met a particularly enthusiastic supporter.
They certainly are passionate about their politics in the SNP. Does anyone know of anyone with tattoo of David Cameron or Ed Miliband on their leg?
Updated
The Tory video team have been busy today. Here is another one they have produced trying to make the case that a Labour government would be held to ransom by the SNP.
Lunchtime summary
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Michael Fallon, the Conservative defence secretary, has ruled out the possibility of his party forming a pact with Ukip after the general election. He made his comments after Labour sent an open letter to David Cameron saying the Conservatives’ refusal to rule out a post-election deal with Ukip suggested he was planning a Tory/Ukip pact that could spell the end of the NHS. (See 11.09am.) Last night George Osborne, and this morning Michael Gove, both refused to firmly rule out an alliance with Ukip. But when Fallon was asked on BBC News if the Tories would be prepared to work with Ukip if necessary, he replied:
No. We have already said we are going for a majority government. We are not in the business of doing deals.
He was then asked to imagine the scenario where no one party could form a majority government and in that instance whether the Conservatives would work with Ukip. He replied: “No. Look, it is our job to put over our policies.” Asked to clarify if that was a no, he said: “That was a no. We are pointing out the dangers of going for a coalition. If you vote for the Conservatives, you will have David Cameron with a proper working majority.” Earlier Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, said that he could never do a deal with Labour, because of its refusal to back an EU referendum, but that Cameron was “somebody we can sit down and talk to.”
- ITV has revealed that an average 7m people watched last night’s leaders’ debate, making it the most watched programme on ITV this year apart from soaps and Broadchurch. (See 11.35am and 12.11pm.)
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Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, has received a triumphant reception in Edinburgh, following the revelation that on some measures she won last night’s debate. She said she was glad she had been able to show there was “a progressive alternative to the big mainstream parties”. (See 12.56pm and 1.03pm.)
Updated
Jim Murphy, the Scottish Labour leader, has reaffirmed Labour’s commitment to ban exploitative zero hours contracts. He made the statement outside a Sports Direct store in Glasgow, in the light of Sports Direct’s heavy use of ZHCs. Murphy said:
During the debate David Cameron said never mind zero hours contracts. Well I do mind, Scotland minds and a Labour government will ban exploitative zero hours contracts.
Time is running out for bad bosses who rip off workers on zero hours contracts. Under a Labour government working people will be guaranteed regular hours after 12 weeks of work.
It is Nigel Farage’s 51st birthday today. In an interview, he said he would be doing a lot more visible campaigning over the next fortnight.
I have been very busy fighting a constituency myself and doing that somewhat below the radar. From next Tuesday, you are going to see me in the West Midlands. in Lincolnshire, you are going to see me in Cornwall, you are going to see me all over the place. I will be travelling a lot over the next two weeks. I will be out on the street, I will be campaigning.
Here’s Ed Miliband with his family in Blackpool.
How different polling methods help to explain why last night's polls gave different winners
The four snap polls published after the leaders’ debate last night gave different results. Partly that is explained by the way the polling companies weighted their responses.
ICM and Survation both weighted their polls to make them representative of the population as a whole. That means their figures showed who would have won if the people watching had been a representative cross-section of Britain. ICM and Survation both had David Cameron and Ed Miliband doing best.
Miliband: 25%
Cameron: 24%
Farage: 19%
Sturgeon: 17%
Clegg: 9%
Bennett: 3%
Wood: 2%
And here are the Survation figures.
Cameron: 25%
Miliband: 25%
Farage: 24%
Sturgeon: 15%
Clegg: 6%
Bennett: 3%
Wood: 2%
ComRes took a different approach. They just weighted their sample to make sure it was representative of those who said they were certain to watch the programme. ComRes thinks this is a better strategy because they take the view that, if those watching are slanted to a certain demographic, that should be reflected in the results. But, interestingly, their findings were not unlike the ICM/Survation ones, although Sturgeon did slightly better. Here are the ComRes figures.
Cameron: 21%
Miliband: 21%
Farage: 21%
Sturgeon: 20%
Clegg: 9%
Bennett: 5%
Wood: 2%
YouGov’s figures, though, were markedly different, and that seems to be because the firm adopted an alternative way of trying to make its figures reliable. It weighted its sample to make it politically representative. But YouGov takes the view that those who respond to snap polls tend to be the most politically committed, and so it also weighted its sample to ensure the right mix between people certain how they will vote, and people who say they might change their mind. Amongst this second group, the less committed voter, Sturgeon was “the runaway winner”, YouGov tell me. That seems to explain why she easily won their poll, and perhaps why Farage came second. Here are the YouGov figures.
Sturgeon: 28%
Farage: 20%
Cameron: 18%
Miliband: 15%
Clegg: 10%
Bennett: 5%
Wood: 4%
Updated
Some Labour figures took to Twitter too last night to express their admiration for Nicola Sturgeon. This is from Austin Mitchell, who has stood down as an MP.
every twitter thinks their leader won but they themselves could have put it better..i 'm the only objective voice .Women won. Sturgeon best
— Austin Mitchell (@AVMitchell2010) April 2, 2015
This is from Diane Abbott.
Politics aside good to see @NicolaSturgeon takes @Nigel_Farage to task on immigration #leaderdebate http://t.co/MvXVdjd8d5
— Diane Abbott (@HackneyAbbott) April 2, 2015
And, according to the Independent, the Labour candidate for Southampton Itchen Rowenna Davis also said Surgeon was “good” on Twitter before deleting her message.
Nicola Sturgeon told supporters in Edinburgh that she “really enjoyed” putting her case in the debate last night.
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Sturgeon said it was important to put across her message to voters in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as in Scotland.
It is really important to me that voters in the rest of the UK do understand the SNP message. My main audience is Scottish voters, but I also want to make clear to voters in England, Wales and Northern Ireland we want to be allies in winning more progressive politics.
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She said she wanted to show that there was an alternative to the Westminster “old boys network”.
I am really glad we had the opportunity to demonstrate Westminster is not just an old boys’ network. There is a progressive alternative to the big mainstream parties and I hope that message got across.
- She laughed off suggestions that the SNP should field candidates in England.
I think it is a reflection of how out of touch the whole Westminster system has become. It is no secret that I support independence for Scotland and short of independence I want maximum powers, full financial powers for the Scottish Parliament, but going into a post-election scenario what I need to do is make sure there is as many SNP MPs in there challenging and pushing the Westminster parties to give as much power to Scotland as possible.
My colleague Severin Carrell has been following Nicola Sturgeon in Edinburgh this morning. He says she has received a triumphant reception.
As @NicolaSturgeon arrives at @theSNP Edinburgh West campaign shop, huge crowd gathers - triumphal feel #GE2015 #leadersdabate
— Severin Carrell (@severincarrell) April 3, 2015
.@NicolaSturgeon now the political centre of gravity in Scotland's #GE2015 campaign: jubilant activists in Edinburgh pic.twitter.com/bnjWB6jtIY
— Severin Carrell (@severincarrell) April 3, 2015
And just to rub in the pain for @scotlibdems, @theSNP Edinburgh West campaign shop is right next door #GE2015 pic.twitter.com/5ipONH14ul
— Severin Carrell (@severincarrell) April 3, 2015
Sturgeon has received a good write-up in some Scottish papers too.
Friday's Times (Scotland edition) Sturgeon steals show #tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers #leadersdebate #scotpapers pic.twitter.com/mqICoFJotc
— Nick Sutton (@suttonnick) April 2, 2015
Friday's The National front page: Surging Sturgeon #tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers #leadersdebate pic.twitter.com/7rpqkRcITL
— Nick Sutton (@suttonnick) April 2, 2015
Ed Miliband is in Blackpool where, from the look of the TV footage earlier, the weather seems pretty grim. He is taking his family for fish and chips.
Family Miliband queue for fish and chips at Harry Ramsdens Blackpool No bacon on the menu #ge2015 pic.twitter.com/UYy6BDtMwO
— iain watson (@iainjwatson) April 3, 2015
Ed Miliband takes the Cosmopolitan quizz
Can you imagine the conversation in Ed Miliband’s office? “Ed, we want you to take a quiz for Cosmo. And you have to write the answers yourself, by hand.”
But he did not say no, and actually he comes out of it rather well, because his answers are funny and self-deprecating.
It is definitely worth a read - although if you are expecting questions on some of Cosmo’s racier subject matter, you will be disappointed.
And here’s an excerpt.
More from ITV on last night’s audience figures. The peak audience of 7.4m viewers (see 11.35am) made the leaders’ debate programme ITV’s most watched programme of the year if you exclude soaps (Coronation Street and Emmerdale) and Broadchurch, and ITV’s most watched programme on a Thursday evening since England v Uruguay in the 2014 World Cup.
Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader and Scotland’s first minister, has been campaigning in Edinburgh. She told Sky News that Labour were wrong to say a strong SNP performance would put the Conservatives in power.
A matter of simple arithmetic says if the SNP and Labour combined have more seats than the Tories we lock the Tories out of government.
If the SNP’s a big force in Westminster we can make sure that a Labour government doesn’t sell out on its values in the way that the last Labour government did.
We can make sure that we keep them honest and make sure they deliver real change for people.
Labour has produced a YouTube video claiming David Cameron could not defend his record in last night’s debate.
And the Conservative have produced their own video, depicting Ed Miliband as in the pocket of Nicola Sturgeon.
"SNP MPs in the House of Commons keeping @Ed_Miliband honest" #leadersdebate https://t.co/txc0lQE4zw
— CCHQ Press Office (@CCHQPress) April 3, 2015
Maggie Chapman, co-convener of the Scottish Green party, told BBC Radio Scotland this morning that two things stood out for her from last night’s debate.
I think two things are clear. Firstly, there is a divide in British politics. We have what I consider to be the right wing, pretty stale and old politics of the old Westminster parties that want to continue the focus on austerity, continue the focus on cuts and continue, I think, to demonise some of the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. Contrast that with the parties represented by women last night who want a humane economy for communities that put people at the centre of what it does.
The second thing to say about last night is the position that Nigel Farage took. He is trying to portray himself as the friendly face of a different alternative party, but what is clear from last night to me is that he is the friendly face of a very, very nasty party.
7m viewers watched the leaders' debate
Some 7m people watched last night’s leaders’ debate, the Press Association reports. That was the average viewing figure. The peak figure was slightly higher.
The two-hour programme drew a peak audience of 7.4m for the contest, a 33% share of the audience.
Last night’s viewing figures were down more than 2m on the equivalent programme three years ago.
Then, 9.4m viewers tuned in to see just three politicians - David Cameron, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg and then-Labour leader Gordon Brown - go toe-to-toe.
The show was also broadcast on the night before the four-day Easter weekend, traditionally a peak period for weekend getaways, while the 2010 debate was held after the festive break.
Last week 2.6m people watched Cameron and Ed Miliband being interviewed separately by Jeremy Paxman and Kay Burley on Channel 4, while a further 322,000 watched the same programme on Sky News.
Updated
Ukip MEP says party needs to be more outspoken to attract attention
David Coburn, the Ukip MEP for Scotland who recently triggered outrage by referring to the Scottish government minister Humza Yousaf as Abu Hamza, defended Nigel Farage’s comments in the debate about foreigners with HIV on Radio Scotland this morning. Coburn said Ukip had to be a bit more outspoken than other parties to attract attention.
[Farage] is rather colourful, as am I, we perhaps have something in common in that regard. We have to be a little louder and a little more amusing or more clever in order to get our market share in the newspapers and also in the press, which tries to keep us out.
Asked whether the party was racist, Coburn replied:
No, of course not. We’ve got so many people who are from ethnic minorities in the party. I myself am homosexual, so we are a pretty broad-based party, so I think that’s absolute nonsense.
He also accepted his comment about Yousaf had been “stupid”.
It was a silly joke in a private context, speaking to someone in private. It was a stupid remark, it shouldn’t have been made. I apologised for it most profusely.
David Cameron and his wife Samantha have been visiting a first-time buyer this morning. The Conservatives are publicising the news that more than 50,000 people have signed up for information about the government’s starter home programme, the scheme announced earlier this year that will relax planning laws to enable developers to sell homes at a 20% discount.
Cameron told journalists that he was “delighted” with last night’s debate, even though the polls showed no clear winner.
My impression of the debate is very much that there is one person, one leader, one party that is offering the competence of a long-term plan that is working and then there is a kind of coalition of chaos out there that wants more debt, spending and taxes ...
I was delighted with the debate. I am glad the poll of polls has got me coming out on top, but to me the real abiding impression was that I have a long-term plan that is working.
Updated
Labour accuses Cameron of planning deal with Ukip that would end the NHS
Following Michael Gove’s “Nein danke” comment on the possibility of a post-election Conservative/Ukip pact (“no thanks” - not exactly a firm ruling out), Labour’s Andy Burnham has written an open letter to David Cameron challenging him to “come clean” over his plans for a pact with Nigel Farage’s party. He says this would spell the end of the NHS
Here’s an excerpt.
I am writing to urge you to come clean over your plans to strike a deal with UKIP.
During last night’s debate you proved that you cannot defend your record, which is why you cannot win a majority. It is now clear that you are preparing to do a deal with Ukip.
Repeatedly pressed, your Chancellor, George Osborne, and Chief Whip, Michael Gove, last night failed to rule out doing a deal with Ukip. When asked again this morning, Michael Gove only said: “Nein danke”. You have, yourself, frequently, ducked this question ...
We know the terms of such a deal. Nigel Farage has said he would work with you in exchange for “a full and fair referendum to be held in 2015”. You have said you would be “delighted” to offer this.
But the real terms of a deal would see the end of the NHS as we know it ...
Private providers have won a third of NHS contracts to provide clinical services since your reforms. Nigel Farage has said he supports “an insurance-based system of healthcare”, while his deputy has warned that “the very existence of the NHS stifles competition”. UKIP’s ex-Tory MP, Douglas Carswell, has called for an “open market” in healthcare contracts.
This shared agenda will be the real basis for your decision to work together. Your deal with Ukip is a poisonous proposition that would deny working people the care they rely on from a service they cherish.
How do you explain the fact that social media analytics have Nicola Sturgeon as the runaway winner of last night’s leaders’ debate, while the four conventional opinion polls have David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nigel Farage and Sturgeon more or less tied?
One factor is that at least some of the polls (ICM and Survation - I’m not sure about ComRes and YouGov) weighted their poll findings to make them representative of the public at large. In other words, the findings did not show who those actually watching the programme thought won; they show who would have won if a representative sample of the population had been watching.
And another factor is that those who use Twitter are not necessarily representative of the population at large. If they were, Scotland would have voted for independence by a huge margin.
On the blog last night I posted an analysis of who won the debate based on Twitter sentiment, compiled by a team involving the Demos thinktank and Ipsos MORI, among others. It shows the three women all had net positive ratings, with Nicola Sturgeon the clear winner, and all four men had net negative ratings.
Our analysis of 420k tweets during the #leadersdebate. Sturgeon, personalities & NHS. #bbcqt http://t.co/4uUQ9Gbf3L pic.twitter.com/TWOx3Z7ZNY
— Jamie Bartlett (@JamieJBartlett) April 2, 2015
TheySay, a company specialising in social media analytics, has now sent me its own assessment of who won the debate on Twitter. Their findings are broadly similar, although they say Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg had net positive ratings. The green bars show positive sentiment, and the red bars negative sentiment. TheySay also have Sturgeon as the clear winner.
Updated
I’ve been at the launch of the new Liberal Democrat poster campaign, which features a picture of Nick Clegg alongside the words “£825 tax cut delivered to working families. Promise kept.”
The poster was launched on a very rainy morning in the car park of a pub in the Lib Dem held constituency of Hazel Grove in Greater Manchester. A small group of determined Labour supporters set up camp across the road with large campaign banners.
Clegg was asked how he felt last night’s debate went.
“I certainly hope on my part that I was able to get the message across for the Liberal Democrats,” he said.
When asked why he had targeted Cameron over the Conservative party’s planned spending cuts, he said: “I think they need to be called out because they are going around the country saying stick with the plan and they have absolutely no intention of sticking to the plan themselves at all.”
Labour gained a seat in a council byelection last night, the Press Association reports.
Labour’s general election hopes were raised by a council by-election gain in a marginal north-west Wales constituency.
Its candidate Glyn Thomas gained at Cadnant, Gwynedd County, against Plaid Cymru’s Glyn Tomos.
The division is in Plaid’s Arfon constituency which would fall to Labour on May 7 on a 2.8% swing since 2010.
The two leading candidates have similar names but this is not uncommon in parts of Wales and probably would not have had any effect on the outcome.
Here’s a Guardian video showing how some floating voters from Ealing reacted to the leaders in last night’s debate.
YouGov poll gives Tories a 2-pt lead, on 37%
Good morning. I’m taking over now from Claire.
Here is are the figures from today’s YouGov poll. The Tories are on 37%, which is their highest figure on a YouGov poll for three years.
Update: Cons lead at 2 - Latest YouGov / The Sun results 2nd Apr - Con 37%, Lab 35%, LD 7%, UKIP 12%, GRN 5%; APP -10 http://t.co/V3ajOHS1FA
— YouGov (@YouGov) April 3, 2015
In election campaigns, the unveiling of a poster is a big event that needs to be attended by party top brass and tons of journalists. In this case, my Guardian colleague Frances Perraudin, who’s with Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander and some drizzle:
The poster itself says:
£825 tax cut delivered to working families.
Promise kept.
I’m sure the Lib Dems’ poster folk must have thought this through, but it does seem odd to be prompting people to think: what promises didn’t they keep?
A surprise: some news that has nothing to do with the leaders’ debate.
Labour has pledged to reverse government changes that restrict judicial reviews. The Guardian’s legal affairs correspondent Owen Bowcott reports:
Labour has pledged to cancel changes for judicial reviews that were introduced by the coalition government on the final day of parliament.
The last-minute changes were made in response to a high court ruling that partially overturned government measures to prevent claimants being paid until a judge gives permission for any case to go ahead.
Labour had already promised to reverse the main restrictions on judicial reviews on the grounds that ministers should be held to account for their actions.
Labour’s justice spokesperson, Andy Slaughter, has now confirmed that a Labour government would also scrap the coalition’s last-minute change in order to “restore judicial review to its rightful place in the constitution and as an effective weapon against bad governance”.
Slaughter said: “The coalition government has been a disaster for access to justice and nowhere more than in its restrictions on judicial review, an essential check for the citizen on executive power.
The SNP says more than 1,200 people joined the party while the two-hour long debate was going on. Only last month, SNP membership hit 100,000, making it the third-largest party in the UK, with twice as many members as the Lib Dems. Labour has the most, at about 200,000 members. The Conservatives have around 150,000.
Gove: 'A Ukip coalition? Nein danke'
They’re all tumbling on to the airwaves now – anyone would think the parties were keen to drum into our early morning brains how very succesful their man was (it is, so far, the men: I’m on the lookout for Friday sightings of SNP, Plaid Cymru and Green folk).
Michael Gove for the Tories and Caroline Flint for Labour are on the Today programme now.
First they got their shots in over the debate itself:
Gove: The three female leaders all did very well in different ways … Nicola Sturgeon emerged as possibly the most impressive debutante.
But in terms of being prime ministerial … David Cameron unambiguously won.
He says there are “dangers” in a “patchwork quilt coalition”.
Flint: I’m always pleased … to see women well represented. We are 50% of the population.
But there was one alternative to David Cameron and that’s Ed Miliband … [Cameron] didn’t seize the opportunity to make his case.
Nicola Sturgeon is a good debater but at the end of this campaign it’s a choice about who’s going to be the next prime minister. If Scots don’t want David Cameron, they ought to think very carefully about voting for the SNP … if Nicola does well, it helps David Cameron get into No 10.
They are asked about a question left unanswered last night – a demand from Leanne Wood and Sturgeon that any in-out EU referendum would need consensus from all four nations:
Gove: It’s a UK vote … If Northern Ireland says that we don’t [agree], if Cornwall says that we don’t – where will it end?
Flint says Labour has ruled out a coalition with the SNP; can Gove say the same about the Tories and Ukip, she wants to know?
Gove: A coalition with Ukip? Nein danke.
Updated
Lord Ashdown on the Today programme
How are the Lib Dems feeling this morning? Rather less jolly than in their 2010 Cleggmania heyday, I’d guess.
But no! Here is Paddy Ashdown, chair of the Lib Dem party campaign, on the Today programme. He’s very happy, he says, particularly with Nick Clegg’s finger-pointing at David Cameron last night:
What you saw last night is exactly what goes on every day in cabinet.
We’re not parting company from the coaliton, the Tories are – they’re veering off to the right. They want to dump £30bn of definict reduction on the backs of the poor.
On the subject of working with other parties in a future coalition:
Putting the national interest first is what matters. If our party suffers that’s what has to happen.
We will not be making the decision based on who we like and who we don’t like. I spent my life fighting the Tories.
The party with a mandate has the right to engage in that discussion first.
James Naughtie asks him if – as a poll by Lord Ashcroft predicted this week – Clegg might lose his seat on 7 May:
If you believe that, you’re a mug, and I’m sure you’re not.
Updated
The Guardian’s data editor Alberto Nardelli has been chewing over the polls and sends me these thoughts:
Looking across last night’s polls, these are the key points to consider:
- Miliband, Cameron, Farage and Sturgeon are virtually tied.
- However, Sturgeon and Farage outperformed both their parties’ current level of national polling (implying that supporters of other parties viewed them as the winners of the debate in great numbers).
- This is particularly remarkable when it comes to the SNP leader. Her party contests seats only in Scotland, and yesterday’s polls were Britain-wide. In fact, when looking at the three polls that asked who performed best and worst, Sturgeon’s net score is top of the ranking in all three surveys. The Ukip leader, on the other hand, was far more polarising: many also saw him as the “worst performer”.
- When it comes to the Cameron v Miliband contest, after last week’s Paxman interviews, the Labour leader had narrowed the ratings gap with the PM. Last night he was able to match these expectations.
Steven Woolfe, Ukip’s immigration spokesman and an MEP, was on the Today programme earlier. He said the leaders’ debate had been a “resounding success for Nigel and for Ukip”.
But he was questioned closely by James Naughtie about Nigel Farage’s controversial comments about foreign-born patients receiving NHS treatment for HIV.
Woolfe says Farage was talking about 60% of those being treated not being British nationals.
(Actually Farage said 60% of those diagnosed as HIV+, as Naughtie also points out.)
Woolfe says those receiving treatment include temporary residents, asylum seekers and illegal immigrants.
The national health service should not be an international health service.
Nigel is saying very clearly that those people here will have to be treated … What Nigel is not saying is that people who are sick and ill should not be treated.
But he declines to call those patients health tourists, even though this is how Farage introduced the issue last night.
People are making too much of a fuss about this, Woolfe insists:
It’s only because Nigel is saying it.
Updated
Morning briefing part 2: everything but the debate
A quieter day today, as party leaders and their advisers nurse their polls and rest their soundbites. Plus it’s a bank holiday and many people will be taking the day off. Which is totally fine. I’m happy here at my desk. Totally fine.
The big picture
A couple of things that might have been lost amid the glitter of the TV debates:
- Two leading executives whose firms appeared to endorse a letter warning of the risks of a Labour government distanced themselves from any political endorsement. The chief executive of the drugs giant AstraZeneca and the newly appointed chief executive of Ladbrokes have recanted from signatures from their companies’ executives in the letter which appeared in the Daily Telegraph on Wednesday.
- Nick Clegg said a multi-party coalition would be a “recipe for insomnia”.
Here’s our round-up of the nationwide polls:
Diary
- A few early interviews to mop up reaction to the leaders’ debate: Ukip’s Steven Woolfe has just been on the Today programme and I’ll have more on that in a minute.
- The Today programme will also hear from Lord Ashdown, Michael Gove and Caroline Flint.
(I’d be quite interested to hear from someone from the SNP, Plaid Cymru or the Greens, to be honest: how are they feeling this morning?)
- David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg are all campaigning in the north west, having stopped over following the debate in Salford.
- At 10.30 Nicola Sturgeon unveils SNP’s anti-austerity plan and NHS policy.
- Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy is out and about in Glasgow today.
- SNP candidate Alex Salmond is campaigning in Fife.
Read these
- Ukip won’t win a seat in London, but what is its influence in the capital, asks Dave Hill in the Guardian:
Immigration is less of a concern for London voters than it is for those everywhere else in the UK, but it’s still right up there: third on the list after the economy and the National Health Service according to a recent ComRes survey. The issue shows even housing, the hot London topic of the day, a clean pair of heels. In terms of Londoners’ voting intentions, Ukip itself is running third, a whisker ahead of or level with the Lib Dems and clear of the Greens.
It’s quite hard to find opinion pieces that aren’t about the debates today – if you spot any, do point them out in the comments.
The day in a tweet
See, politics can be different.
.@NicolaSturgeon @Plaid_Cymru Thanks to you too. And well done on being such a strong voice for Scotland. See you soon. xx #LeadersDebate
— LeanneWood (@LeanneWood) April 2, 2015
If today were a film, it would be…
The Long Good Friday <checks watch>.
The key story you’re missing when you’re election-obsessed
Iran has promised to make drastic cuts to its nuclear programme in return for the gradual lifting of sanctions as part of a historic breakthrough in Lausanne that could end a 13-year nuclear standoff.
Morning briefing part 1: the leaders' debate
Good morning and welcome to the clarity of the morning after a night when everybody claimed to have won the first seven-way leaders’ debate. I’m Claire Phipps, attempting to pick my way through who said what and why, and whether anyone can really claim to have come out on top. Plus, later Andrew Sparrow will come on board for the rest of the day’s political news.
I’m on Twitter @Claire_Phipps and reading your comments below the line too. If I’ve missed out your favourite bit of the debate, or the bit that made you throw a campaign pledge mug at the telly, sorry, but condensing this has already taken longer than any of the seven party leaders spent rehearsing.
What the polls said
What would you like them to say? You can probably find one that proves you right.
There were five snap polls after the debate and each of them came up with a (often only slightly) different outcome. Here are the results of the Guardian/ICM poll:
Notably, when those polled were asked to choose between the two contenders for prime minister, they were split 50-50 between David Cameron and Ed Miliband.
In the other polls:
- ComRes-ITV had Cameron, Miliband and Nigel Farage tied on 21%. Nicola Sturgeon was next on 20%, followed by Nick Clegg on 9%, Natalie Bennett on 5% and Leanne Wood on 2%.
- YouGov had Sturgeon top with 28%. Farage was second on 20%, ahead of Cameron (18%) and Miliband (15%). Clegg was on 10%, Bennett on 5% and Wood on 4%.
- Survation for the Daily Mirror put Cameron and Miliband on 25% each; Farage on 24%, Sturgeon on 15%, Clegg on 6%, Bennett on 3%, Wood on 2%.
- Ipsos-Mori’s analysis of Twitter reactions had Sturgeon the clear winner.
Once you put them all together, you get this: a dead heat between Cameron and Miliband, with Farage and Sturgeon hot on their heels:
This seems to be a pretty sensible analysis from my colleagues in Westminster:
Labour, aware of Miliband’s poor personal ratings before the campaign, will be pleased he was at least matching the normally more popular David Cameron, according to ICM and the three other post-debate polls.
But the prime minister will be pleased that he emerged from a safety-first performance largely unscathed from his only head-to-head television clash with Miliband.
What the leaders said
Clegg’s opening gambit was a pragmatic one:
I think it’s pretty obvious that no one standing here is going to win this election outright. You’re going to have to choose … who’s going to work with who.
They then spent the following two hours making it pretty clear that they’d need sturdy nose pegs to work with each other at all (Sturgeon and Wood the notable exception).
Question 1: how to cut the deficit?
What we learned:
-
Clegg: it’s all about balance. The wealthiest need to pay a bit more.
-
Cameron: We will find savings of £1 in every £100 the government spends. I don’t want to put up taxes.
-
Wood: We were told the deficit would be eliminated during this parliament; debt has gone up. So much pain for so little gain.
-
Farage: We could easily cut £10bn from the foreign aid budget; another £10bn from brussels; revisit the Barnett formula and save £5bn.
-
Miliband: Reverse tax cut to millionaires. Make spending reductions (note: he didn’t call them cuts) in areas outside education and health. Boost living standards.
-
Bennett: We’re offering the reversal of austerity. We do need to raise taxes on those who aren’t currently paying their share.
- Sturgeon: Economic policy shouldn’t be an end in itself, it should be a means. We should have modest spending increases … the deficit would still continue to fall.
The key exchange
Sturgeon: Where are those £12bn cuts in welfare going to fall? Who is going to pay the price?
Cameron: What is the alternative? It’s putting up taxes and cutting people’s pay. I don’t want to see that happen.
Sturgeon: That’s not the kind of economic plan I want. I want an economic plan that protects the vulnerable.
The zinger
Farage says all parties agree to committing 0.7% of GDP to foreign aid, for reasons he can’t understand. You’re wrong, says Bennett: we want to lift it to 1%.
The unanswered question
Wood to Miliband: will you give £1.2bn to Wales? [This is the amount she says is due in order to bring parity with Scotland.]
Question 2: long-term funding for the NHS
Or “our NHS”, as both Miliband and Cameron are careful to put it.
What we learned:
-
Farage: For emergency care, it’s probably the best in the world … We’d put an extra £3bn in and end hospital parking charges.
-
Sturgeon: It’s the most precious public service we’ve got … It should not be for profit, and SNP MPs in Westminster will vote against privatisation [health in Scotland is devolved to Holyrood].
-
Bennett: There’s no place for privatisation in healthcare. We want 0% in profits and to take the market mechanism out.
-
Clegg: The NHS doesn’t need warm words, it needs hard cash. We’ll ask the richest to pay extra to find £8bn. More for Scotland and Wales too (£800m and £450m).
-
Wood: The NHS in Wales faces two threats: continued cuts and centralisation; that’s the fault of the Labour government in Wales.
-
Miliband: A mansion tax will help pay for the NHS; as will hedge funds and tobacco companies for the Time to Care fund. My two sons were born in a PFI hospital.
- Cameron: This is the most important national institution that we have. My son Ivan received unbelievable care. A strong NHS needs a strong economy.
The key exchange
Having tried to turn the conversation to so-called health tourism – prompting Sturgeon to ask if there was anything he wouldn’t blame on foreigners – Farage steered the debate into the most contentious waters of the night:
My challenge to everybody here was of course ignored and brushed aside for chiefly politically correct reasons. Here’s a fact and I’m sure the other people here will be mortified that I dare to talk about it.
There are 7,000 diagnoses in this country every year for people who are HIV+, which is not a good place for any of them to be, I know. But 60% of them are not British nationals. You can come into Britain from anywhere in the world and get diagnosed with HIV and get the retroviral drugs* that cost up to £25,000 per year per patient.
I know there are some horrible things happening in many parts of the world but what we need to do is to put the national health service there for British people and families who in many cases have paid into this system for decades.
[*They’re actually called antiretroviral drugs, by the way.]
Let’s move quickly on to:
The zinger
Courtesy of Leanne Wood:
This kind of scaremongering rhetoric is dangerous. It’s dangerous, it divides communities, and it creates stigma to people who are ill and I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
Farage didn’t look particularly ashamed, but Wood’s admonishment won her the first applause of the night.
Sturgeon backed her:
When someone is diagnosed with a dreadul illness my instinct is to view them as a human being, not consider what country they come from.
Miliband and Clegg didn’t tackle the issue on the night (to be scrupulously fair, the debate had moved on a bit by the time they got their next turn to speak) but later joined the criticism:
I want to say, Nigel Farage's comment about the NHS and HIV was disgusting. He should be ashamed. The fact he isn't says so much.
— Ed Miliband (@Ed_Miliband) April 2, 2015
And Farage's comments about foreign people with HIV were simply vile and desperate. Politics of the lowest form. #FairerSociety
— Nick Clegg (@nick_clegg) April 2, 2015
The unanswered question
Miliband wanted to know why Cameron had promised “no top-down reorganisation” of the NHS in his 2010 manifesto. Cameron said he wanted doctors with stethoscopes not bureaucrats with clipboards. If anyone spots a bureaucrat with a clipboard, please send them back to the 1980s sitcom from which they’ve escaped.
Question 3: how would you address the immigration issue?
At last! Farage gets to talk about the issue he’s always telling us we’re not allowed to talk about, even though talking about it and talking about how we’re not allowed to talk about it is virtually the only thing he talks about.
What we learned
-
Miliband: I don’t think it’s prejudiced to worry about immigration. No benefits for the first two years, and stop the undercutting of wages. If you want a party that will cut Britain off from the rest of the world, that’s not me.
[He doesn’t say who it is, but I’m going to go with “Nigel Farage” here.]
-
Wood: Bankers caused the financial crisis, not immigrants. It’s often true that areas with most anti-immigrant feeling have low immigration but are also poor. The immigration debate doesn’t help the problem.
-
Sturgeon: The answer is investing more in homes, services and a decent minimum wage. The views of Westminster parties are driven by fear of Ukip not by rational debate. Of EU immigrants, most work or are students.
-
Cameron: Immigration too high and needs to come down. No unemployment benefit for those coming from the EU; if they have no job within six months, they’ll have to go home. And they can’t send child benefit to families back home.
-
Farage: There’s nothing we can do while we’re in the EU. We have a total open door to 10 former communist countries and the eurozone. We’d have to build a new house every seven minutes to deal with current levels of immigration.
-
Clegg: There’s good immigration and bad immigration. We have new checks at the border, penalties for unscrupulous employers, no benefits if you don’t learn English. But without good immigration the NHS would collapse overnight.
- Bennett: We celebrate the free movement of people within the EU. Problems are caused by government policy failures not immigrants.
The key exchange
Bennett said the UK government had taken in only 143 Syrian refugees, and asked: “Why aren’t we taking our fair share?”
Cameron: We have taken some of the most vulnerable people, including elderly and disabled people … but we are one of the biggest nations helping people in refugee camps so they can go home. We cannot take all those people in.
The zinger
Clegg to Farage:
The Farage family were foreigners once. I’m married to a foreigner – you’re married to a foreigner.
Honourable mentions
Cameron: Never mind zero hours, with Ed you’d get zero jobs.
Sturgeon to Cameron:
If there are changes needing made in the European union, then surely the best thing to do is to try to build alliances to make those changes, not act like a petulant schoolchild threatening to leave if you don’t get your way?
The unanswered question
Wood and Sturgeon wanted a commitment from those parties backing an in-out referendum that all four countries of the UK should have to agree before it could leave the EU. They’re still waiting.
Question 4: what will you do for young people?
What we learned
-
Wood: Young people are going to fare worse than the older generation and it’s the first time for a long time that’s been true. Plaid wants free university tuition fees but pledge to retain the fee subsidy and make some courses free, eg for doctors.
-
Miliband: I’d guarantee access to good education and to apprenticeships if you get the grades; cut university fees to £6,000; ban zero-hours contracts; build 200,000 homes a year by 2020. Young people “being ripped off” in the private rental sector.
-
Cameron: Most important is to make sure there are good jobs. I want to create 2m more good jobs in the next parliament, and 3m apprenticeships. I’ve already uncapped university places and backed starter homes for British people to buy.
-
Bennett: Education should be paid for by progressive taxation. Students leave with an average £44,000 debt; 77% will never pay it off and 45p in every pound is never going to be repaid. Greens want no tuition fees and would pay” off student debt.
-
Clegg: “I of course infamously couldn’t put into practice my party’s policy on tuition fees … there was no money left … we did the next best thing.” Don’t forget about the pupil premium, and free meals at primary school.
-
Sturgeon: Scotland has kept access to university free of fees … “I wouldn’t be here as first minister without the free education I had access to. I think it’s shameful for any politician who has benefitted from free education to take it away from others.”
- Farage: Young people from private schools are happy: they’re rich, they’re dominating jobs. Abolishing grammar schools pulled up the ladder. “We encouraged lots of people to go to university who weren’t academic and would have done better with a trade.” He’d back building homes on brownfield sites.
The key exchange:
Clegg asks Cameron why the Conservatives are planning to cut money for schools. Cameron is having none of it:
We sat in the cabinet room together, we took difficult decisions together. I defend all the decisions we took and I think your sort of pick-and-mix approach is not going to convince anybody.
The zinger
Sturgeon: I think we’ve seen tonight from this discussion why we really need to break the old boys’ network at Westminster because frankly none of these guys can be trusted when it comes to tuition fees … I would say, hope there’s some SNP MPs in Westminster keeping him [Miliband] honest.
The unanswered question
Wood to Miliband: why did Labour in Wales vote against a Plaid Cymru amendment to scrap zero-hours contracts in the care sector?
But you could also argue that the question from the audience member – who was after responses that would make young people feel “optimistic” – didn’t bring out the shiny happy answers either. Bennett talked (not sure how we got there) about wildlife extinction. Farage – go on, guess – talked about self-government. Wood talked about jobs, which is at least a plus. But Cameron wins the downer prize with his reminder that young people really ought to be thinking about their pensions.
Closing statements
What we learned:
-
Sturgeon: Vote for something different, better, more progressive. And if you’re not in Scotland, don’t worry: we can bring about change for you too.
-
Clegg: Above all, make sure we don’t lurch this way or that. Let us finish the job fairly.
-
Miliband: Let’s build a Britain that puts working people first.
-
Wood: Austerity is not inevitable, it’s a choice. This election is a chance for Wales to be strong like Scotland.
-
Bennett: Vote for what you believe in, not for the lesser of two evils.
-
Farage: I warned you at the beginning, I said they were all the same: the politically correct political class … Most of them never had a job in their lives*.
- [*Well, Wood was a probation officer, Sturgeon a solicitor, Bennett a journalist of this parish. But not real jobs like being a stockbroker, true.]
- Cameron: I’ve tried to have one task in mind above all others: fixing the economy. Stick with the plan and the team who brought that plan.
Who went off-message
<Thinks> <Thinks some more> No one.
Apart from this studio audience member, Victoria Prosser, who heckled Cameron about armed services veterans sleeping on the streets, bucking the general audience trend, which was to be very, very quiet.
What happened afterwards
Wood and Sturgeon hugged. Miliband sought out Cameron for a handshake, and was the first to head for the audience (he likes working people). Clegg and Farage had a brief natter.
Farage went for a cigarette.
Oh, and the pundits piled in. There will be tonnes of coverage today; do have a read of Anne Perkins on why having three women on the stage did matter. But I’ll save you the bother of reading Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail with this little taster, which surely qualifies as most redundant cultural reference of the night:
And Who On Earth was that Welsh Leanne? Had she walked in from a recording of Gavin and Stacey?
The newspapers, for the most part, seemed to stick with the front pages they’d drafted at 7.55pm:
It's a #leadersdebate newspaper montage #tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers https://t.co/1SSmPLH7tm pic.twitter.com/syaky76xjx
— Nick Sutton (@suttonnick) April 2, 2015
tl;dr
The seven leaders in their own words
The phrases they wanted to lodge in our brains:
Bennett decent, peaceful political revolution;
Clegg fair, don’t lurch this way or that;
Sturgeon change, Scotland, progressive;
Cameron long term economic plan, mistakes of the past;
Wood hope, communities, Wales;
Miliband working people, future, fairer choices;
Farage what no one talks about, get real.
The seven leaders in our columnists’ words
Jonathan Freedland: Miliband struggled; Sturgeon easy command; Farage rant; Wood applause; Cameron remote.
Gaby Hinsliff: Cameron stuck; Clegg triangulated; Miliband earnest; Farage spluttered; Wood least impressive; Bennett human; Sturgeon aspirational.
Hugh Muir: Cameron ill at ease; Miliband combative; Clegg forlorn; Sturgeon assured; Bennett and Wood distinctive; Farage vacuity.
Polly Toynbee: Cameron unsettled; Clegg grating; Farage loser; Sturgeon stellar; Wood good; Bennett amateurish; Miliband confident.
You can read all the words between the adjectives here.
Still not enough for you? Here’s what else to read:
- Nicola Sturgeon’s strong poll performance demonstrates that she outperformed expectations
- Triumphs, turn-offs and body language giveaways
-
John Crace: lots of tired arguments – but a shortage of ding-dongs
- And last night’s live blog: as it happened
I’ll post a round-up of the day’s other news shortly.
