Conservative party

Today, it’s the Conservative Party's turn to release its manifesto. Labour pushed out its own document ‘Britain can do better’ yesterday, so it's Tories' turn to try and better it. As with Labour's manifesto, the big announcement has already been briefed out and has made the front pages of most newspapers: extending right to buy. To help guide you through the melée of stories and spin, here is a summary of today’s main election stories. 1. Thatcherism is back Unless the Tories have another big surprise in store, the centre piece of their 2015 manifesto is a pledge to extend right-to-buy for 1.3 million families in housing association homes.

Tomorrow’s Tory manifesto will contain the boldest policy proposal of this campaign so far. The party will promise to extend the right to buy to 1.3 million families living in housing association properties. This policy has the potential to create a new group of homeowners and to start the reversal of the decline in home ownership; even critics of the plan think that more than 150,000 families might take advantage of it. It helps to keep alive the idea of a property owning democracy which has been so crucial to the success of the centre-right in this country.

David Cameron's new Inheritance tax policy is clearly an important political message of aspiration and family values rather than a policy that will either help many or actually have much fiscal impact. The OBR has numbers on death rates and estates subject to the tax: just under 600,000 people died in 2013/14 and only 5 per cent of those had estates that were liable to inheritance tax. So that is just over 26,000 deaths in one year whose estates paid inheritance tax. According to the Telegraph, Cameron's policy would only begin in 2017, two years into the next parliament. So three years of this policy and on 2013/14 rates this will only effect about 80,000 estates. On the face of it not a huge vote winner then.

This week David Cameron invited Ukip voters to 'come home' to the Conservative party. 'Come with us, come back home to us rather than risk all of this good work being undone by Labour,' he pleaded at a campaign event. However for all of Cameron's talk, Labour sources claim that the Tories would be quite happy to form a coalition with Ukip after the election. Now, Jonathan Reynolds, the Labour MP for Stalybridge and Hyde, says that a pact has been made in Tameside, the Greater Manchester borough, between Ukip and the Tories. It's claimed that the parties have agreed not to stand against each other in a number of wards for the local election in order to increase their chances of beating Labour.

The Tory-Labour battleground remains very close. Lord Ashcroft has returned to ten competitive marginal seats in his latest round of polling and has found swings to Labour, ranging from 0.5 per cent to four per cent. According to his latest polls, the Conservatives are set to hold onto five of these marginals: Blackpool North & Cleveleys, Gloucester, Kingswood, Pendle and Loughborough — the last represented by Education Secretary Nicky Morgan. Use the interactive chart above to see the latest polls. In the other five marginals, Pudsey is a tie between the two parties — as it was in November last year — while Labour is set to take Harrow East, Hove, Morecambe & Lunesdale and Stockton South.

David Cameron took the stage at an election rally in Wadebridge, Cornwall this evening. He was surrounded by supporters waving placards. From the pictures, it seems there was a real sense of excitement about the Conservative party. But here are a couple of photos taken from a perspective that's a bit, er, different. The PM is currently holding a rally in Cornwall, in what appears to be a massive cow shed pic.twitter.com/eJh6RrnsQ6 — Niall Paterson (@skynewsniall) April 7, 2015 To give you a better idea of the size of this barn, and the size of the rally, the event is entirely behind this bus pic.twitter.

In a close campaign, you would normally expect the smaller parties to get squeezed as voters decided that is really a choice between Labour and the Tories. But this time, thing might be different. Why, because the general expectation is that there will be another hung parliament and the coverage of the campaign is being reflected through that prism. This emphasis on the likelihood of a hung parliament could change how people actually vote. As I write in the current issue of the magazine, the British Election Study shows that among voters who expect another hung parliament support for both Labour and the Tories is radically lower with the minor parties doing that much better. Among those who expect one party to win outright, Labour and the Tories poll at 39 and 38 percent respectively.

On Thursday night, David Cameron didn’t eviscerate the competition. But nor did he suffer any damage and that, to Tory high command, meant that it was job done. The Tory leadership didn’t want any debates at all, they’d rather not have taken the risk. So, to get through this one debate with the dynamics of the campaign unchanged was, to their mind, a result. As Cameron enjoyed a late night drink with Samantha Cameron, George Osborne and his key aides on Thursday, he reflected on how much better he felt than he did after the first debate five years ago when he knew that he had not only underperformed but that he had two more to get through. This time round he’d done fine and was done with debates.

With just five weeks to go till polling day, one happy voter in Bedford has had enough. Mr S suspects that it's for the best if Patrick Hall, the Labour candidate for Bedford and Kempston, doesn't pay a personal visit to this address.

When launching the Conservatives’ campaign this week, David Cameron told party activists that the general election was ‘on a knife edge’. He is right. His chances are little better than 50/50, which is terrifying given the calibre of his opponent. The Prime Minister is entering this election with a list of achievements matched by almost no other leader in Europe. Yet he’s struggling to beat one of the least popular opposition leaders in modern times. What has gone wrong? It’s not the economy. Employment stands at a record high, and most voters will never have lived through such low inflation as we have today. The price of food is actually falling, as is the price of petrol; it costs £18 less to fill up an average car than it did 18 months ago.