Conservative party

Wednesday

James Forsyth

The scene is set for a bust-up

From our UK edition

PMQs today is going to be the last time that Gordon Brown and David Cameron face-off against each other before the debates. Both men will be keen to score pyschological points against the other and to send their troops off in good heart. This means that PMQs will be an even noisier affair than usual. But both leaders will have to remember that if they behave in the debates as they do in PMQs it would be a disaster for them. The aggressive, shouty nature of PMQs would not translate well to the debates. One thing to watch today is what Nick Clegg does. He’s racheting up the rhetoric again, repeating his claim that the other two parties are corrupt.

Fraser Nelson

British jobs for British workers…

From our UK edition

Did you know that there are fewer British-born workers in the private sector than there were in 1997? I'd be surprised if so: these official figures are not released. The Spectator managed to get them, on request from the Office of National Statistics. We use the figures in tomorrow's magazine, but I thought they deserves a little more prominence here. See the graph above, which shines a new light on the boasts Gordon Brown has been making. He said his Glasgow speech last month that: "If we had said twelve years ago there would be, even after a global recession, 2.5 million more jobs than in 1997 nobody would have believed us.

Daniel Korski

Goodbye world, see you in a few weeks (for a proper EU dust-up)

From our UK edition

With plenty of domestic issues to debate, the election campaign promises to see little intrusion from the outside world - barring Russia invading a small neighbouring country, a terrorist attack or another financial meltdown. Nor will Britain say much to the world in the next couple of weeks; ministers will be be represented at international meetings, for example in NATO, by senior officials, and Britain's diplomats have been told to keep quiet. As soon as the election is over, however, there will be plenty of action. The Cabinet Office is busy planning a quick update of the National Security Strategy, and then will come a slightly longer Security and Defence Review.

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Inauthenticity, meet skewer

From our UK edition

We're not even one day into the election campaign proper, and already the internet is fulfilling its role as the Exposer-in-Chief of spin, deceits and slip-ups aplenty.  I direct you towards Guido's post on Brown's – ahem – impromptu support at St Pancras station earlier.  Or Left Foot Forward's account of the omissions from Cameron's list of The Great Ignored.  Or Sam Coates's tweets about the #stagemanagedelection.  And there's plenty more where they came from. In a campaign where inauthenticity is going to get skewered at every turn, politicians clearly need to go about things differently.  But there are all too many signs that they're stuck in the old, familiar grooves of elections past.

Daniel Korski

The Tunnel Ridge Fault election

From our UK edition

At times the chasm between Britain’s political parties is as great as the San Andreas Fault. Sometimes the difference is more like a small rift, a matter of tone not policy. In this year’s election, the difference between the parties is somewhere in between, like the lesser-known Tunnel Ridge Fault in Eastern California. In part, the appearance of only minor differences may explain why the polls are showing such different things; some predict that Labour will hang on to power, others that the Tories will be able to win.

James Forsyth

Behind enemy lines

From our UK edition

Well, well Gordon Brown has started his election campaign in a constituency that is notionally a Tory seat. Rochester and Strood is being fought for the first time at this election but the invaluable UK Polling Report tells us that the Tories would have just won this seat in 2005. I suspect that Brown has headed to Kent on the first day of the campaign in an attempt to show that Labour haven’t written off the south east despite coming fifth there in the European elections and that Labour is still a national party. David Cameron is off to Birmingham and Yorkshire and the shadow Cabinbet are fanning out across the country in an attempt to hit every TV region in Great Britain, evidence that for all the talk of this being the first internet election TV remains the dominant medium.

James Forsyth

Cameron launches the ‘modern Conservative alternative’

From our UK edition

Reaganesque was the word that sprang to mind watching Cameron’s launch event. Standing on the terrace of County Hall with Parliament behind him, providing the snappers with some great images, Cameron spoke about the ‘modern Conservative alternative’ to five more years of Gordon Brown. The implicit message was youth and vigour. This was one of those occasions where the visuals matter more than what was actually said. The no-notes speech contained a string of attacks on Labour’s waste and the prospect of five more years of Brown. But Cameron was careful to sandwich this with some optimism. At the start he said that a vote for the Tories was a vote for hope, optimism, change and a fresh start.

James Forsyth

The parties tussle for media attention

From our UK edition

Westminster today is dominated by the sound of helicopters hovering over head, waiting for Brown to set off from Downing Street to the Palace. This morning is the last time that Brown will have the full political advantage of his office, the ability to set the news agenda. The Tories are attempting to step on this by scheduling their campaign launch for bang in the middle of the time when Brown is expected to be at the Palace requesting a dissolution of parliament. I suspect that we are in for a game of media chicken with Brown trying to rush back to Downing Street and announce that the election is called so that the broadcasters cut away from the Cameron event. One surprise today is that Labour put up Lord Kinnock for the 8.10 slot on the Today Programme.

Martin Bright

The Inter-Generational Election

From our UK edition

Geoffrey Wheatcroft has kicked off the election campaign with possibly the most depressing article I have ever read about British politics. Jetting off to the States for an academic engagement, the old curmudgeon says he feels no regret at missing an election in which he has lost interest.  This say more about the author of the piece than the election, which promises to be the most fascinating in my adult life. But then I am nearly twenty years younger than Mr Wheatcroft. His central argument is that the Labour and Conservative messages are uninspiring. The Labour government will admit that the situation is dire, but claim it would be worse under the Tories; the Tories will call for change, without having much to offer.

Peter Hoskin

Now’s the time

From our UK edition

If there's anything we don't already know about today, then I'm struggling to find it.  The election will be declared for 6th May.  Brown will make a pitch which bears close resemblance to his interview in the Mirror today: "We have come so far. Do we want to throw this all away?"  Cameron will say that the Tories are fighting this election for the "Great Ignored".  Clegg will claim that the Lib Dems represent "real fairness and real change".  A hundred news helicopters will buzz around Westminster.  A thousand blog-posts (including this one) will have headlines to the effect of "And so it begins...".

Monday

Daniel Korski

Have a gay time

From our UK edition

Chris Grayling's erstwhile view that Britain's inn-keepers can interpret anti-discrimination legislation as they see fit belongs where he originally found it: in the biggot bin. There is no place for anti-gay views in British politics, or the Conservative Party. This is not just a question of electioneering -- ie currying favour with a symbolically important segment of the electorate - but is a matter of decency. Homosexuals have as much place in modern Britain as everyone else. A worrying part of the airing of Grayling's (now-disavowed) comments is that it has given Labour an excuse to tarnish the Conservatives with an anti-homosexual brush.

David Blackburn

Grayling’s gay gaffe

From our UK edition

The Tories have weathered Chris Grayling’s gay gaffe. The story could only gain momentum if the papers had gone to town on it. They have not. The Times gives it a couple of paragraphs at the bottom of an inner page and even the Independent and the Guardian relegate it to the interior. The news agenda has gone into election over-drive, but I doubt this story would have had legs anyway, even before his denial. Grayling is no homophobe and whilst he voted for the Equality bill he is right that it should be applied with a soft-touch where the boundary between public and private space is blurred. The State should not dictate how you use your property unless you contravene criminal law by doing so.

Fraser Nelson

The true cost of Brown’s debt binge

From our UK edition

When Alistair Daring admitted last week that there would indeed be job losses arising from the proposed National Insurance hike, it would have struck Gordon Brown and Ed Balls like root canal surgery. This blows wide open the main part of Brown's election deceit: asking the public to look at the advantages of the borrowing, and not contemplate the flip side to the debt coin. Not to ask where the repayments will come from, or the impact of those repayments on the jobs of the future. No wonder Darling is today being made to claim the opposite. The grim truth is that every job "protected" now, due to debt, will be more than balanced out by money taken away from the economy in the form of the interest needed to serve that debt.

Fraser Nelson

Brown helps Cameron to define his Big Idea

From our UK edition

Gordon Brown has walked straight into George Osborne’s trap. After bleating that the national insurance tax cut is unaffordable, he has decided to make this a massive election dividing line – claiming that this teeny (1 percent of state spending) tax cut somehow poses a mortal danger to an economic recovery.  Please, God, let him keep on this message through the campaign. “The Tories are proposing to cut your taxes and make you better off – stop this lunacy, and vote Labour”. But Alastair Darling has taken it further, with a significant piece of language on the radio this morning. The Tory tax cut, he says, is “taking money out of the economy” at a vulnerable time. As he said at 7.

Sunday

David Blackburn

Tory wars are history

From our UK edition

In lighter moments, Gordon Brown is alleged to imagine that he is John Major and David Cameron is Neil Kinnock. Now, I think the Tories will win outright, but would Cameron resign if Brown’s daydreams became reality? ‘No,’ Cameron tells the Mail on Sunday. Despite the bravado, Cameron must fear a challenge hot on the heels of failure – emasculated backbenchers have threatened as much in private recently. By reputation, Tories romance in intrigue and excel at regicide; yet few credible usurpers exist. William Hague’s low campaign profile denotes spent ambition as much as it does proximity to Lord Ashcroft.  Liam Fox is admirable but has never commanded sufficient support anywhere beyond his immediate coterie.

Peter Hoskin

Two steps forward for the Tories, one step backwards for the Lib Dems

From our UK edition

Last week, the Tories strengthened their tax-cutting credentials with a smart policy on national insurance.  I'm sure you didn't miss it.  But one part of the recent Tory resurgence is, to my mind, being underplayed: they now have a much stronger message on government waste.  After all, the NI policy is being funded by cutting waste.  And then there was that spoof website which pulled the limelight onto Labour's wasted spending.  And then there are the interviews in which Tory frontbenchers – such as William Hague today – say stuff like: "If there’s waste in government spending, which the Labour Government says there is, we should be saving the waste, not saying we’ll go on wasting it for several more years.

Daniel Korski

For the Tories, finding “good” EU issues gets harder

From our UK edition

I recently sat down with a European foreign minister to discuss the EU's enlargement strategy and how it would deal with those applicant countries, like in the Western Balkans, who want to join the Union but whose chances of integration in the next ten years or so are limited. We tried to write down those of his ministerial colleagues who could be brought together for a regular discussion of the issue; we stopped at five names.  Only five EU foreign ministers out of 27 could be counted on to join an unscheduled discussion about enlargement policy. That's a problem, including for the Tories. Here is why.

Saturday

David Blackburn

A battle with the EU may be closer than you think

From our UK edition

Euroscepticism is David Cameron and Gene Hunt's sole shared attribute. But, bequeathed a poisoned chalice at home, the EU is not a future Tory government's immediate priority. Set-piece battles over rebates, defence procurement and the CAP can be avoided for a time, but skirmishes will be a regular occurrence. And some of these will be bloodbaths. The first test comes in June, when EU finance ministers will consider hedge fund and private-equity firm regulation. There is no more contentious a topic. Recent European regulatory initiatives have impeded British financial services to the extent that even Brown and Miliband have taken note.

Peter Hoskin

Labour didn’t think this one through…<br />

From our UK edition

There's me thinking that Labour wouldn't go negative with their latest poster, created via an online competition among their supporters.  I mean, surely they wouldn't want to undermine their whizzy, positive, digital energy by picking a design which didn't present an equally positive Labour vision.  But, oh, how they did.  Here's the winning design: Now, there are two immediate problems with this poster.  The first being that I'd always thought the character Cameron is meant to be playing – DCI Gene Hunt – is actually quite popular with the public, despite his rough and less-then-edifying edges.  Indeed, he even topped a recent poll as "Britain's favourite TV hero".

Peter Hoskin

Osborne confirms that there will be no more Tory cuts this year

From our UK edition

David Cameron said as much in his Today Programme interview, but now we know for sure: we've heard everything we're going to about Tory spending cuts this year.  George Osborne confirms the news in an interview with the Guardian today: "In the interview, the shadow chancellor also disclosed, for the first time, that he would not reduce public spending by more than £6.5bn in the current financial year. He said £6bn would come from efficiencies, and £500m from cuts to child trust funds and working tax credits for the better off. There would be no further 'in year' cuts in his emergency budget, scheduled within 50 days of a possible Tory victory, he said." It's tempting to point out that £6.