The big picture
The story set to dominate the morning is the Telegraph’s story that 100 business leaders have penned a letter in support of a Conservative win – of which more later.
Here are the other stories to know about:
Labour
- Ed Miliband will say that workers on zero-hours contracts should have the right to a regular job after three months (Labour had previously said employees would win this entitlement after a year).
- On a day in which many of the parties head for Scotland, Ed Balls says that a vote for the SNP is not a vote for a mini-Miliband in Alex Salmond’s pocket, but a vote for the Tories:
There is only one way to end Tory austerity in Scotland and that’s by voting Labour.
Lib Dems
- The Lib Dems will set out steps to protect journalism from state interference in their election manifesto.
- Nick Clegg says his party would triple statutory paternity leave to six weeks if they get another stab at government.
Conservatives
- In a kitchen chat with the Sun (during a campaign, you can only be photographed in a kitchen, on a battle bus, or in hi-vis clothing. If you manage all three together, you win the election), David Cameron and George Osborne said a future Tory government would not raise income tax or national insurance, adding to last week’s surprise pledge not to hike VAT.
- Cameron also said he’d keep Osborne as chancellor if they stay in Downing Street:
The team is the team. You don’t want to change the person who has driven our economic performance, and has been at the helm of it.
A tax promise, Chelsea FC, and what really happened on Syria. Cameron and Osborne's 1st joint interview in tmrw's Sun pic.twitter.com/Gmw3nisGcR
— Tom Newton Dunn (@tnewtondunn) March 31, 2015
Ukip
- Jeremy Zeid, the party’s candidate in Hendon, was removed after he said in a Facebook post that Israel should “kidnap” Barack Obama. Ukip said he had stepped down because of health issues. I should give you a running total of misplaced Ukip candidates here, but I’ve lost count.
Other things we learned
- Ed Miliband is “aware of both Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith” and thinks “Rosamund Pike would make a great Bond”.
- David Cameron believes he is distantly related to the Kardashians.
- As yet there is no word on who Nick Clegg thinks should replace Zayn Malik in One Direction.
For everything else, catch up with Nadia Khomami’s round-up of Tuesday’s key moments here.
Diary
- At 8.30am Ukip’s economics spokesman, Patrick O’Flynn, and deputy chairman, Suzanne Evans, stage an event to demand “a free, fair EU referendum” and request assurances from Cameron that he does not have a secret deal on the issue with the Lib Dems.
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David Cameron and George Osborne spend the morning in the West Midlands.
- At 9.30 London mayor and would-be Tory MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Boris Johnson, launches the Conservatives’ London campaign.
- Around the same time, Samantha Cameron will be visiting a school with another Conservative candidate, Kelly Tolhurst.
- Also at half nine, Scotland’s party leaders – first minister Nicola Sturgeon (SNP), Jim Murphy (Labour), Ruth Davidson (Conservatives) and Willie Rennie (Lib Dems) take questions at the Scottish Police Federation conference.
- Davidson will also be on the Today programme at 7.10am, with Murphy on at 8.10.
- It’s busy in Scotland today: at 1pm the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, alongside Murphy, makes a speech in Glasgow.
- The Lib Dem battlebus heads to Scotland too, with Nick Clegg and Jo Swinson talking about plans to triple paternity leave for fathers.
- And the Greens will be campaigning in central Scotland, highlighting their pledge for public ownership of the railways.
The big issue
More than 100 business leaders have signed a letter, splashed over the front of the Telegraph today, saying the “Conservative-led government has been good for business” and warning that “a change in course will threaten jobs and deter investment … and put the recovery at risk”.
Wednesday's Telegraph front page: 100 business chiefs: Labour threatens Britain's recovery #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/ZpgEOdZIAo
— Nick Sutton (@suttonnick) March 31, 2015
This is familiar territory for the Telegraph, which has run similar letters before – including, coincidentally enough, on this day in 2010 – but will prompt a tussle this morning over Labour’s attractiveness to big businesses.
The Shadow business secretary, Chuka Umunna, has already said of the letter:
No one will be surprised that some business people are calling for low taxes for big businesses. That’s nothing new.
The letter has been signed by at least five business leaders who previously backed Labour, including Sir Charles Dunstone, the chairman of Dixons Carphone and Talk Talk plc, and Duncan Bannatyne, a former star of Dragons’ Den.
The strength/weakness of such a long list of names is that it requires/encourages readers and rival media to hit google in search of a bit of background on this long list of illustrious business names. So, the first signatory: Rooney Anand. Here he is, in a Guardian article from last year, after his company, Greene King, lost a battle with HMRC over “a highly artificial tax avoidance scheme”.
At first glance, Lady (Karren) Brady, Lady Shields and Lord Rose jump out as Conservative peers.
Lord Bamford donated more than £1m to the Conservatives before the last election and was nominated for a peerage the same year, only to withdraw his name. But he got another go in 2013, when he joined the House of Lords.
Expect much more of this. The second job for today, of course, is to work out why some of the signatories are picked out in pink.
Read these
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John Cassidy in the New Yorker gets a little overexcited about the “thrilling” UK election campaign:
Not only is the contest perilously close, it has more story lines than an episode of Downton Abbey.
(Although, to be fair, there was that episode where they decamped to the Scottish Highlands and everyone was ghastly to each other.)
- In the Times (paywall), Daniel Finkenstein wonders what it will take to produce a last-minute swing to the Conservatives such as was seen in 1992:
While parties can lose even when their candidate for prime minister is preferred to his main rival, and they can lose when they are thought stronger on the economy than their opponents, no one has ever lost when ahead on both leadership and the economy. Yet this time, the Conservatives look as if they might.
- A guide to what the Independent generously calls “the masterminds behind the scenes”.
- Emily Ashton at Buzzfeed has a tale of Stewart Jackson, the Tory incumbent in Peterborough, telling a gay constituent “to never bother me again”.
The day in a tweet
Surely the big news about this letter: http://t.co/aNLY3sKyPJ is that 100 senior business leaders don't think China is a "major economy"?
— Jonathan Portes (@jdportes) March 31, 2015
If today were a song, it would be…
0 to 100 (as long as Drake was referring to hours in contracts and open letter signatories).
The key story you’re missing when you’re election-obsessed
In the Nigerian election, opposition leader Muhammadu Buhari has swept to victory, ousting sitting president Goodluck Jonathan and inflicting the first defeat on an incumbent in the history of Africa’s biggest democracy.
