The big picture
Yesterday’s big set pieces were the BBC’s interview with Ed Miliband and the fallout from the SNP’s manifesto launch in Edinburgh, which was framed by some pretty ugly personal attacks from the Tories against Nicola Sturgeon – particularly from Boris Johnson.
Today, the Conservative campaign team are wheeling out their former prime minister, John Major, to continue hammering home English voters’ fears of the SNP’s potential role in a minority Labour government. They will be hoping that Major’s implicit gravitas and statesmanlike political standing will help to temper the more personal attacks of Johnson and the defence secretary, Michael Fallon.
The Telegraph has seen a copy of Major’s speech, in which he will say that any deal between Miliband and Sturgeon would lead to “a daily dose of political blackmail” from the SNP.
The SNP will be in a position to “bring down the government at any time” if its demands for increased spending in Scotland are not met, Sir John will say.
During tough questioning from Newsnight’s Evan Davis last night, Miliband did his best to avoid discussing exactly what a post-election deal with the SNP would look like, saying it was “presumptuous”. He also knows, however, that talk of this grubby aspect of coalition-building can only harm Labour’s vote on 7 May.
Neil Breakwell, the deputy editor of BBC’s Newsnight, says Miliband was disingenuous in refusing to answer based on the “hypothetical” question, given that – by Newsnight’s own figures – there is a 92% chance that some form of coalition or vote-by-vote deal will be necessary for any party govern.
Ed Miliband is not alone in avoiding the hypothetical question. Politicians from all parties do it. David Cameron has refused to discuss the possibility of any post-election deal with Ukip, for example.
The problem though for Messrs Miliband and Cameron is that according to Chris Hanretty, who produces the Newsnight Index, the probability of no majority for either party is currently sitting at 92%.
Meanwhile, at a speech in Manchester today, Miliband will also say that Labour ministers would, on their first day in office, instruct officials to call on universities to reopen admissions for highly oversubscribed nursing courses this year after 30,000 would-be nurses were turned down because of a lack of places in 2014.
How are the polls looking?
Today’s diary
Here are some of the campaign events on our radar today:
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6am: Nick Clegg visits a fish market as he campaigns for the Lib Dems in St Ives, Cornwall
- 8.30am: Ukip “major policy” briefing
- 10am: Scottish Liberal Democrats manifesto launch, South Queensferry, Edinburgh
- 10am: Nigel Farage visits businesses in Canterbury, Kent
- 10am: Nicola Sturgeon addresses STUC in Ayr
- 11am: Former PM John Major makes speech in Solihull, West Midlands
- 11am: Ed Miliband talks about Labour’s NHS plans at Manchester Metropolitan University
- 11.30am: David Cameron hosts PM Direct event in West Yorkshire
- 2pm: Nick Clegg campaigns in Twickenham, west London
Reading list
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Ian Macwhirter in Scotland’s Herald newspaper says Boris Johnson’s slurs against Nicola Sturgeon are not only offensive, they are counterproductive:
The demonisation of Ms Sturgeon just enhances her already buoyant popularity. Are the Tories determined to do the SNP’s job for them?
And let us hear no more in this campaign about the hateful, abusive cybernats. They are being comprehensively out-nastied by the unitrolls who seem to have taken over the UK press.
The Telegraph blogger Iain Martin was all over Twitter yesterday calling the SNP’s manifesto launch event a “Nuremberg Rally”. They do this partly to elicit abusive online responses which they can then print as examples of offensive nationalism.
Increasingly, though, the SNP’s legion of internet supporters are getting wise to this tactic and are using ridicule instead of hate-speak.
But again, no Scottish voter – or English voter for that matter – could have seen Ms Sturgeon, an articulate young woman, as an extremist. Her language is entirely in the tradition of British social democracy.
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Lesley Riddoch in the Guardian, who says Sturgeon has “worked half her life to become an overnight success”, explains the tightrope Scotland’s first minister needs to walk with every public utterance:
Sturgeon has grasped that she must address two distinct audiences with every keynote speech. The Scottish audience hasn’t necessarily been hanging on her every word – we know from exposure to the radical Sturgeon that there is no prospect of a deal with Tories, or a U-turn on scrapping the renewal of Trident. What Scots needed to see was that despite all the attention she has received from London-based commentators, Scotland still comes first for Sturgeon. After all, the allure of Westminster power has preoccupied, distracted and softened many other reforming efforts in the past. For Scots, the single message on the podium and backdrop was vitally important – Stronger for Scotland.
For progressive viewers in the rest of the UK, the detailed programme was important – and possibly more appealing than Labour’s own. More money for the NHS, no money for Trident and a number one priority to end austerity – it’s easy to see why Scottish opinion polls consistently predict a meltdown for Scottish Labour, as it struggles to identify its own core values or any weak point in Sturgeon’s appeal.
- Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times (paywall) argues that if the Conservatives lose the general election, they can only blame their own reputation. Despite the spheres aligning for the incumbents – a growing economy, a popular leader, a tub-thumping rightwing press – “still the party cannot escape the noxious reputation that began to form in the 1980s, calcified in the 1990 … Too many Britons … refuse to vote Conservative as a matter of identity”.
- Newsnight’s policy editor Chris Cook says the SNP is using an accounting “dodge” in order to delay by a year the point at which it scores debt.
If today were a song …
… it would be Loch Lomond, an ode to one party taking the high road, while the other takes the low road. This Runrig live version is one to get any Scot – or half-Scot – dreaming of a better land.
The non-election story you may have missed …
Next time you’re stuck on a train that smells of wee, mysteriously waiting on the tracks outside Crewe station until a platform becomes available – like they weren’t expecting it or something! – why not close your eyes and pretend you’re on one of Japan’s maglev (magnetic levitation) trains?
One of them has just broken the world train speed record. A cool 373mph. (And Japan’s scheme costs less than Trident.)
