Good morning and welcome to the final Monday of this 2015 election campaign. I would say “the” 2015 election campaign, but talk of a second vote should Thursday not produce a government strong enough to withstand a Queen’s speech wobble has made me cautious.
The big picture
David Cameron declared himself Team Nigella, but Labour now has Delia Smith on side. The TV cook, author and joint majority shareholder of Norwich City FC has pulled on a Labour team shirt (don’t worry, my stock of footballing metaphors is nearly exhausted).
Writing in the Mirror, Smith says:
When I was about seven, 67 years ago, I recall we had a poster … in our front window saying: “Vote Labour for a National Health Service” in the year they were campaigning for it. Now what they pioneered and worked so hard for – which became the envy of the world – is in grave danger of being compromised or, at worst, ceasing to exist as we know it …
Labour has more vigour and younger candidates. Our future lies with them – their ideas and vision need to be heard.
Smith follows on the heels of actor Steve Coogan, who on Sunday urged voters to give Labour their X, and both – coincidentally enough – cite the apparent threat to the NHS posed by another Tory government.
Health is Ed Miliband’s big theme on Monday, and he’s expected to make much of a report commissioned by the government but as yet unpublished that is thought to be critical of the massive health reforms implemented under then health secretary Andrew Lansley. The report, by the former Marks & Spencer chief executive Stuart Rose, was passed to ministers in December 2014.
Andy Burnham, Labour’s shadow health secretary, will say on Monday:
They won’t tell us what’s in it. They won’t tell us what they plan to do with it. They won’t tell us what they plan to do with the NHS. But we do know one thing. We know who wrote it: the Conservative peer, Lord Rose.
Lord Rose may be good at running supermarkets. But I say to David Cameron: you can’t run the NHS like a supermarket, we don’t want a supermarket health service, so publish this report and show us what is in your secret plan.
On Monday, the Guardian publishes three letters – one from a group of US medics, one from public health professionals, and one from nurses – warning of the growing creep of private influence within the health system.
And the Mirror reports that Crosby Textor, the lobbying firm run by Lynton Crosby, Cameron’s election strategy chief, advised private health firms how to “take advantage” of NHS contracts now open to private bidders.
Austerity and welfare cuts were key themes at Sunday night’s Scottish leaders’ debate in Edinburgh, with SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon warning her Labour counterpart Jim Murphy that her party’s MPs would not support further cuts to disability benefits:
If Labour puts forward a budget that imposes more cuts on vulnerable people – as clearly they intend to do – the SNP will vote against it and we will seek to use our clout in the House of Commons to get a fairer deal.
Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said that what she called “the rough wooing between Nicola and Jim” was precisely “the kind of deal-by-deal vote you would see in the next parliament if it was a Labour party that was reliant on the SNP … exactly the sort of politics that most people hate”.
- Victims of domestic violence will be given easier access to legal aid to help them escape abusive relationships, Labour will pledge today.
- The permanent secretary to the Treasury, Sir Nicholas Macpherson, has argued that the 2008 financial crisis was “a banking crisis pure and simple”, contradicting Conservative claims that it was caused by Labour overspending.
- The Lib Dems say they’ll use the £227m fine levied on Deutsche-Bank for the Libor scandal to fund air ambulances and buy new hospital equipment (last week Cameron promised the same money to apprenticeships).
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Read Andrew Sparrow’s round-up of Sunday’s key developments here. It’s not all about #EdStone. But it’s mostly about #EdStone.
And with three – three! – days to go, here is the latest poll of polls:
Diary
If you don’t trip over a politician this week, you’re really not trying hard enough. Expect non-stop campaigning for the next three days (as long as you’re not in a safe seat that no party can even be bothered leafleting. Democracy, eh?). Here are Monday’s highlights:
- Leanne Wood, leader of Plaid Cymru, is interviewed on the Today programme at 7.10am.
- At 8.35am, Ed Miliband is on the Today programme, where he will be trying to focus minds on the NHS.
- David Cameron is at a bank holiday rally where he will pledge tax cuts for 30 million people. (I’m not sure simple pledges cut it any more. How about a tattoo or a Scout Promise?)
- The Liberal Democrat battle bus chugs on, in Twickenham, Kingston, Carshalton and Newquay.
- At 10.45am, former Labour Scottish first minister Jack McConnell campaigns in Aberdeen. Eddie Izzard is also in Scotland for Labour, campaigning with Jim Murphy in Glasgow.
- At 11am, Green party leader Natalie Bennett makes a speech on immigration.
- At the same time, Ukip is launching its manifesto for Scotland.
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Nicola Sturgeon takes the SNP campaign to Fife, Helensburgh in Argyll & Bute, Greenock, Largs and Dumfries.
- Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie will kick off a “polling week blitz” of 11 Lib Dem seats in Stonehaven, near Aberdeen.
- This afternoon, Miliband, Nick Clegg and culture secretary Sajid Javid will take questions at the Citizens UK assembly in London.
The big issue
Could there be a second general election this year? This won’t, of course, be bad news for devoted readers of election campaign live blogs, but others – voters and politicians alike – will not be relishing the prospect of a re-run.
Tory grandee Ken Clarke, in a Guardian interview on Monday morning, says a second bout would fix nothing:
You can get out of a hung parliament by having a second election but, not surprisingly, the public tends to return a parliament which looks rather like the first one.
So where has the idea come from? Labour’s out-and-out snubbing of a coalition deal with the SNP – by all accounts set to be the third largest party come Friday – leave a potential Prime Minister Miliband in a vulnerable position. A Labour official reportedly described a second election as a “very likely scenario” this weekend: either a minority Labour government falls over without SNP support; or a minority Conservative one (even with Lib Dem backing) is toppled when Labour and the SNP vote down its Queen’s speech.
Clarke was a Tory government whip in the runup to the first election of 1974. Of that year’s second election, in October, he told the Guardian:
Harold [Wilson, the Labour leader] made a minuscule increase in his majority and by the last two years of the parliament had a minority government ...
You won’t necessarily find that if you hold it within a few months you will get a different result from the first one so people need to make their mind up this time.
The Telegraph reports that the Tories have identified 23 seats to bombard this week in a last-ditch attempt to secure a majority. Most are held by the Lib Dems, including Eastbourne, Bath, Chippenham, Cheadle, Twickenham, and Kingston and Surbiton.
And the Times (paywall) has “senior Labour figures” warning Miliband against trying to form a minority government if he doesn’t beat Cameron to the most MPs.
Andrew Rawnsley’s guide to what happens next once the votes are counted is definitely worth a read before Thursday.
Read these
- Nicholas Watt in this here Guardian notes that the Tory right has been ominously quiet during the campaign:
If the Tories have lost a significant number of seats – about 30, to take their numbers down to 276 – then Cameron’s position may become complicated at the 1922 meeting on Monday. Cameron may try to hold on.
But one idea doing the rounds is that some on the right might try to install Boris Johnson as Tory leader before a second election in October. In the meantime, Cameron would remain as a caretaker prime minister.
- Writing in the Times, Tim Montgomerie says the system is unfair to Ukip and the Greens:
The old left-right divides are increasingly obsolete. The new questions involve localism versus centralism; intergenerational fairness; openness to the world or isolationism; and debates as to whether the individual matters most in public policy or that family and community do. These questions often divide rather than unite existing parties.
Personally, I’d vote for a eurosceptic, Christian Democratic-style party. Under a PR system I might have that option.
- Lesley Riddoch in the Scotsman says the result in Scotland is pretty much a foregone conclusion:
With three days to go, it’s the mood south of the Border that’s now more interesting. While English political leaders, commentators and money experts are predicting Britain will go to hell in a handcart if the SNP plays any policy-making role in government, English voters themselves seem far less perturbed.
Indeed some – clearly feeling cheated they cannot vote for the SNP and the UK’s most popular party leader – have begun asking pointed questions about the shortcomings of English democracy instead.
The day in a tweet
Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy reveals what gets politicians, reporters and live bloggers through the last week of the election campaign (mine’s a Diet Coke):
If today were a song, it would be…
Monday Monday by The Mamas & The Papas: “Oh, Monday morning, you gave me no warning of what was to be.”
The key story you’re missing when you’re election-obsessed
Today could be the day we find out the name of the new baby … ha, sorry, just kidding. It’s May the Fourth, which means Star Wars news, which is that the eighth instalment of the series is to be filmed in the UK, at Pinewood.
