The big picture
A scan of the morning front pages demonstrates a whiff of election torpor, with few titles splashing on campaign announcements, and wider politics relegated to downpage stories. But after three days of variants on the theme of “Red Ed and Redder Nicola bad for economy”, it’s no surprise that even the rightwing press have some attack fatigue.
Given the slight lull in hostilities, the key issue of the day will be whether Labour manages to shift the debate away from questions about grubby politicking and back to policy. Conservative HQ will be delighted at the media coverage of recent days. As the Guardian’s political editor, Patrick Wintour, points out in his excellent analysis of the Tory strategy:
They have managed to combine their warnings of economic chaos after 8 May – the threat of excessive borrowing, leftwing influence and instability – with the threat posed by Scottish nationalism. By uniting Nicola Sturgeon and Ed Miliband in the nation’s mind, the Tories have injected a badly needed new ingredient into their warnings about Miliband. Previously, those warnings were not gaining sufficient traction because Miliband had been outperforming expectations.
Miliband will be talking about how to improve cancer services in the NHS, as Labour’s campaign strategists seek to cut through the media morass and get back to campaigning on the front foot, talking about the party’s strengths.
Here are the stories you will be hearing and reading about today:
Labour
- Miliband is to promise extra help for NHS cancer patients by pledging an extra £150m for better diagnostic systems. This will include testing by family doctors with the aim to getting results within one week after government figures. revealed 23,000 patients waited longer than their target time.
- The party would also appoint former Countryfile presenter Miriam O’Reilly as an “independent commissioner for older people”.
Conservatives
- David Cameron will answer critics who say that the focus on the SNP is overly negative by outlining plans to deliver 600,000 extra free childcare places.
- Wikipedia has blocked a user account on suspicions that it is being used by the Conservative party chairman, Grant Shapps, “or someone acting on his behalf” to edit his own page along with the entries of Tory rivals and political opponents.
- Conservative party supporters should consider voting tactically for Labour in most areas of Scotland as the best way of supporting the UK, the former Tory chairman Lord Tebbit has said.
- The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, is primed to take bigger role in the Conservative campaign after getting starstruck response while canvassing in the capital.
Liberal Democrats
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Nick Clegg will say the party would end public sector pay cuts if they are returned to government, guaranteeing that salaries rise by at least inflation. He will say people working in the public sector deserve to see the “light at the end of the tunnel” after five years of pay restraints.
Other news
- The SNP’s flagship financial policy of full fiscal autonomy could lead to a shortfall of nearly £9bn in Scotland’s finances by 2020, according to the latest projections from the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
- Nigel Farage has said that critics of the lack of ethnic diversity in the Ukip manifesto have got it wrong, because along with “one fully black person” it also features a “half-black” party spokesman.
- The DUP has ruled out taking part in any coalition, but said it would be prepared to support a party whose proposals would be in the best interests of Northern Ireland and the UK.
Today’s diary
- 7.30am: Clegg to announce public sector pay policy at National Liberal Club, London.
- 8.30am: Mayor of London takes part in LBC’s regular Call Boris phone-in show.
- 9am: Cameron making speech on childcare in Bedfordshire.
- 9.30am: Sturgeon campaigns in Edinburgh South
- 10am: Scottish Labour launch women’s manifesto in Baillieston.
- 12noon: Cameron and Johnson campaign together.
- 7.30pm: Farage is the latest party leader to be interviewed by the BBC’s Evan Davis.
Reading list
In the Guardian, Rafael Behr says Clegg has a point when he says only the Liberal Democrats can restrain the reactionary ‘Blukip’ tendency:
As with the SNP surge, a significant cause of Lib Dem decline is deep-rooted cultural aversion to the Tories. Not only is the Tory brand toxic for many voters; it turns out to contaminate parties that get too close, as Labour did in the no camp during the Scottish independence referendum. So the Lib Dems can expect little gratitude for serving as a parliamentary prosthesis where there might once have been a liberal, moderate, pro-European limb on the Conservative party. Nor is there any excitement about their potential role as lobbyists for more liberalism in a Labour administration. But that doesn’t mean their humiliation is good for British politics. The space they occupy would otherwise be vacant.
The Telegraph’s Philip Johnston ponders what could happen if nobody can form a government. The answer? We’d be a bit like Belgium:
If neither Mr Cameron nor Mr Miliband were able to put together a viable government, a second election would normally follow; but the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act 2011 complicates matters. It provides for a dissolution of Parliament only when there is a specific vote of no confidence in the government or if two thirds of all MPs vote for an election. This makes the prospect of another early general election less likely. In any case, the parties may have little appetite for one given the expense and the prospect of losing support in a fresh contest.
Without a dissolution we would have a legislature but no government, a bit like Belgium, where the prime minister resigned in April 2010 and no new parliamentary majority could be established for almost two years.
Michael Goldfarb, writing for Politico.eu, says Cameron is promising the UK a referendum on the EU without having a plan, asking what the prime minister really thinks:
Given the volatile state of British feelings about the nation’s relationship with the EU, it really is extraordinary how little the issue has figured in this election campaign. If the issue is so important, why aren’t Conservatives jumping all over Labour for refusing to offer a referendum? Clearly, their strategists have decided the EU referendum is not the critical issue that will turn this tight election campaign to the Tories. They have to know that the most recent polling shows that more voters want to stay in the EU then leave.
If today were a song …
… it would be Melanie Fiona - Change The Record ft. B.o.B.
Non-election story of the day
Ever wonder why it’s always the pretty girl or guy in front of you in the Pret queue that gets a free coffee? It’s simple - staff are allowed to give away free stuff to people they fancy. And their biggest-selling product is the simple banana.
