The big picture
It’s calculator apps at dawn, as the Conservatives and Labour clash over who will spend/cut/borrow the most should they get the keys to No 10. David Cameron will promise 2m new jobs in his second term; Ed Balls will be wooing small businesses with a promise to cut rates in his first budget – paid for by reversing the most recent cut in corporation tax.
- As the Guardian reports on its front page, David Cameron’s opening swipe that working families would face a £3,000 tax rise if Labour were elected met with a dismissive response from the Institute of Fiscal Studies, which labelled the figure “unhelpful and of little value”. But the IFS also said there was “real uncertainty about what path Labour wants to follow for the public finances”.
- Personal digs abounded, with Cameron lamenting “the economic chaos of Ed Miliband’s Britain”, calling the Labour leader a “Hampstead socialist” (surely the worst kind). Ukip said Nigel Farage would on Tuesday accuse the prime minister of “wilful deception” over promises to cut immigration levels.
- Despite all the unpleasantness, the party leaders will line up alongside each other on Thursday evening for the first TV debate (we’re not counting last Thursday, given that Cameron and Miliband didn’t set eyes on each other). On Monday, the order was confirmed as – from left to right, in podium terms at least – Natalie Bennett (Green), Nick Clegg (Lib Dem), Nigel Farage (Ukip), Ed Miliband (Labour), Leanne Wood (Plaid Cymru), Nicola Sturgeon (SNP) and David Cameron (Conservatives):
“Clowns to the left of him” says a Tory source re the debate line up: http://t.co/dKc422qn1B pic.twitter.com/EiIZeklc2f
— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) March 30, 2015
- For a masterclass in how to make a politician exceedingly uncomfortable while being smilingly polite throughout, take a look at Evan Davis’s Monday night Newsnight interview with a fidgety Grant Shapps, as the Tory party chairman is quizzed over the £3,000 figure, and asked whether the online marketing companies he set up are really the kind of business the Conservatives should be championing:
For a full roundup of Monday’s key developments, cast your eye over this summary by my colleague Nadia Khomami.
And here’s our regular glance at who’s up, who’s down, and who’s keeping their balance in the middle:
Diary
- David Cameron surfs the sofas of the morning TV breakfast broadcasts, finishing off with a spot of radio on the Today programme at 8.10am.
- At 7.30am, Nick Clegg will announce more than £2bn of extra funding for mental health over the next parliament; read the details of the pledge here.
- Also this morning, Nigel Farage is in Kent for the Ukip campaign poster launch.
- Plaid Cymru launches its manifesto; leader Leanne Wood is on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme at 8.30am.
- Labour seems to be pretty quiet, other than Ed Balls on cutting rates for small businesses. Miliband might well be preparing for Thursday’s TV showdown. Farage – who’d have guessed? – told reporters he’d done nothing yet to get ready for the debate.
The big issue
There’s no escaping David Cameron. He’ll be touring TV and radio stations in the morning, having already sat down with the Daily Mail for an interview in which he promised to create “a job for everyone that wants one”, adding that the government had “generated four private sector jobs for every public sector job lost”.
He added that he planned to put “rocket boosters” under the right-to-buy scheme, suggesting that in the Tory manifesto housing association tenants would win the right to purchase their homes.
On the SNP, Cameron told the Mail:
They are different. They want to break up Britain. You cannot deal with these people …
And on money, aspiration and Conservatism:
There’s a very natural instinct to keep more of their own money to spend because you want to spend it on your family, you want to try and plan for a nice holiday, have a bit more put aside for Christmas, take the children on that trip you want to take them on.
That’s the most natural instinct in the world. Owning your own home – I’ll never forget the moment I got the first keys to my first flat and walked through the door. You just feel so excited that you own something and you’re going to take care of it.
He confirmed that his wife, Samantha Cameron, would be upping her role in the campaign:
She will be sometimes on her own, going to support candidates, some of the time with me, some of the time sorting out the children’s homework and her business and everything else she’s got to do.
She’ll take multitasking to a new level.
(Only women multitask, have you noticed?)
We can expect some rather different questions and answers later on Tuesday when Heat magazine – Google it, highbrow politics readers – publishes its own interview with the prime minister. Heat has already revealed that the PM knows all the words to Let It Go and promises further revelations such as “what sauce does he put on his chips?” Stay tuned.
Read these
- In the Times, Rachel Sylvester warns party leaders of the need to reach out beyond their traditional voters:
There is an interesting mixture of arrogance and insecurity in the failure by the Conservative and Labour leaders to reinvent their parties. On the one hand, both are so convinced of the strength of their own argument that they do not feel the need to win over non-believers; on the other, each also feels that their only task so close to an election is to secure the support they already have rather than trying to shake up the system.
The bitterness and negativity that will only intensify between now and May 7th derive from the fact that each party is going into battle from a position of weakness rather than strength. They are fighting fear with fear in the hope that by attacking their rivals they will protect themselves by turning attention away from their own faults.
- Kezia Dugdale, Scottish Labour deputy leader, writing in the Daily Record, goes on the offensive over Nicola Sturgeon’s call for Labour to work with the SNP:
If she was really honest, she’d admit another five years of the Tories is exactly what she wants in the hope that would provoke Scots to be “all in” for another independence referendum. The greatest gamble of all.
But here’s the truth. If you play in the SNP casino, it’s the Tories’ house that always wins.
- In the Guardian, Polly Toynbee is also thinking about Labour’s future in Scotland:
Burning with energy, blessed with an enviably able new leader, the SNP feels like the party of most Labour activists’ secret dreams … With motions on more generous benefits, land reform, no fracking, no austerity, no Trident, when Nicola Sturgeon says SNP support would give Labour ‘backbone and guts’, a good many English Labour party members might nod in agreement.
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Patrick Strudwick, at Buzzfeed, has an extraordinary interview with Adrian Hyyrylainen-Trett, the Lib Dem candidate for Vauxhall and the first would-be MP to go public about his HIV-positive status:
It’s everyone’s personal choice whether they speak publicly. I’ve come to a position in my own mind that it’s time someone talked about it. I couldn’t have done this five or six years ago.
The day in a tweet
A colourful take on what the country could look like on 8 May from US data site FiveThirtyEight. True, its founder Nate Silver didn’t quite call 2010 right; here’s his mea culpa for that one. Its revised forecasting model is explained here.
Lib Dem supporters look away now: the yellow swaths are predicted SNP seats.
Our predictions for the U.K. election: http://t.co/7NSj88FMJS #GE2015 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/C8W1JncRfz
— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) March 30, 2015
If today were a novel, it would be …
Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The only breakfast you’re likely to get today that won’t be gatecrashed by the prime minister.
The key story you’re missing when you’re election-obsessed
It’s the final day of negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme, as the midnight deadline approaches for a settlement in which Iran could accept restrictions on its nuclear capabilities in return for a lifting of UN sanctions.
