Labour party

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Labour leadership campaign: who might have a pop?

From our UK edition

So there could be a Labour leadership contest coming up. Who might have a pop? Chuka Umunna: Some members of staff in Ed Miliband’s team had concluded Chuka Umunna was worth giving serious assistance to, having concluded that their current boss was a goner a while ago. The smooth Blairite Shadow Business Secretary has also been very good at charming colleagues in the party, taking time to have coffee with those who Miliband has ignored. He believes he has the support of the party’s New Labour wing, mostly represented by Progress. Andy Burnham: If Umunna has the Blairites sewn up, Burnham has the other side of the party. He has clearly positioned himself as a man of the left, a populist figure who sends the Labour conference to raptures.

The Spectator

As it happened: 2015 general election results

From our UK edition

Welcome to The Spectator's live coverage of the 2015 general election results. We provided results and analysis overnight and throughout the day. You can read all the coverage below. Key points: David Cameron remains PM —He has won a majority and has visited Buckingham Palace for an audience with the Queen. The Conservatives have won 331 seats. In an exclusive revealed by The Spectator, Cameron told Conservative HQ staffers this morning that 'this is the sweetest victory of them all'. Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and Nigel Farage have resigned as leaders of their parties. SNP has swept Scotland — The SNP now have 56 MPs in Scotland, while the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats each have one.

Thursday

The Spectator

Bond villains

From our UK edition

After working for Bill Clinton, the political strategist James Carville said he had changed his mind about where power really lies. ‘I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the President or the Pope,’ he said. ‘But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.’ By this he meant that every political leader, no matter how powerful or radical, lived in fear of going too far into debt, lest the market hiked up interest rates, tipping the government into collapse. Alas, that’s no longer the case. This magazine ridiculed Gordon Brown for claiming to have ‘put an end to boom and bust’.

Isabel Hardman

Has Ed Miliband got something clever up his sleeve?

From our UK edition

How will Ed Miliband manage tomorrow if Labour does end up the second largest party but with a viable ‘anti-Tory alliance’ in the House of Commons? The Tories are trying to craft a narrative that such a government would be illegitimate, and David Cameron will give a statement early on Friday. But there is a theory developing among some Tories who rate Miliband’s strategic skills that he could be about to produce his own clever game-changer too. He could be about to offer a significant devolution of powers to the regions, a huge transfer of power to Scotland and Wales, the elected Senate of the Nations and Regions that was promised in its manifesto as a replacement for the House of Lords, and electoral reform.

Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Labour are toast

From our UK edition

Was this really the wisest picture for Labour to put on their get-out-the-vote leaflets this morning? We should know which of the parties are toast by breakfast tomorrow.

Rod Liddle

Is Ed Miliband really proud to have fought alongside me? I’m not so sure

From our UK edition

Sheesh, sometimes you read something and it makes you go all gooey inside. Take this email I got from Ed Miliband. Dear Rod, As I write this, Justine and I are on our last trip on the Labour campaign bus. We're heading back from an incredible supporter rally in Leeds to Doncaster so we can vote there first thing tomorrow morning. So while I have this rare, quiet moment, I want to say this: thank you. I am so proud to have fought this campaign alongside you. If our country votes for a Labour government tomorrow, it will be because of the dedication, passion and generosity of hundreds of thousands of people like you. Makes you feel all warm inside, no? I got it because I’m a member of his party. I don’t think Ed is proud to have fought alongside me, if I’m honest.

Isabel Hardman

Revealed: the party with the most negative election campaign

From our UK edition

Which party is the most negative in this election campaign? All of them have spent a great deal of time being negative about their opponents’ apparent negativity, claiming that only their own party is running a positive campaign about the future for this country, and so on. But it’s easy to make grand claims, and even easier not to measure up to them at all. To give us an answer, academics at British Election Leaflet Project at the University of Nottingham have analysed leaflets from the parties in this campaign. They looked at 1,300 pieces of election literature from nearly 300 constituencies. All the leaflets were uploaded on electionleaflets.org. Their findings are quite surprising.

Sebastian Payne

Election night: the ten ‘Portillo moments’ to watch out for

From our UK edition

Election night is going to be a long affair but some excitement will ensue if any prominent politicians lose their seats — unexpectedly or otherwise. There is likely to be at least one 'Portillo moment' — akin to the the 1997 election night when then-Tory MP Michael Portillo lost his seat and signalled that the Tories were on course to be out of power for 13 years. In chronological order, here are the big name politicians to watch out for tomorrow morning: 1.

Alex Massie

The disunited kingdom

From our UK edition

Never before — at least, not in living memory — has there been such a disconnect between north and south Britain. We vote together, but cast our ballots in very different contests. Scotland and England, semi-detached in the past, are more estranged than ever. The mildewed contest between David Cameron and Ed Miliband touches few hearts north of the Tweed; the battle between Labour and the SNP still mystifies many of those sent north to observe the strange happenings in Scotland. Edmund Burke wrote of another revolution: ‘Everything seems out of nature in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies.’ Something similar might be said of this Scottish insurrection.

Rod Liddle

Miliband’s tablet of stone may cost him my vote

From our UK edition

You have the advantage over me. You know the result of the general election, whereas I do not — a consequence of the moronically linear progression of time. Indeed, you may already have fled to one of those countries with a much lower tax rate and less fantastically irritating politicians — Algeria, for example, or Benin. Or Chad. And you are reading this digitally on some patched-in fibre-optic service, the electricity generated by goats trotting forlornly around a gigantic hamster wheel outside — but you are nonetheless delighted with your new life, despite the flies and the occasional gang of marauding, maniacal jihadis. At least you’re not here to experience Britain being well and truly sturgeoned.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Last ditch attempts to win votes are pointless without months of legwork

From our UK edition

All three party leaders are in the middle of their last-minute campaigning efforts, travelling across the country with little sleep. But what are they actually doing during these last few hours before polls open? David Cameron underlined that this isn’t just about meeting voters but about the photo opportunities by deciding to have a cosy chat with members of the farming community in Brecon… at 6 o’clock in the morning. The press were held back by this rather pointless pen (which later fell over) while the Prime Minister held his morning chat. To be fair, farmers do get up very early, though more to deal with their animals than for a leisurely cup of tea.

Steerpike

Former Tory Brian May backs his local Labour candidate

From our UK edition

When Brian May quizzed Russell Brand about his revolution at a screening earlier this month, the Queen guitarist mentioned that he had launched his own campaign, called Common Decency. The scheme supports 'decent candidates' irrespective of their party: 'We've been asking for feedback on who is actually a decent candidate and who would listen, genuinely act for the interests of their constituents, whichever party they are from.' May says the aim is to try and 'unseat MPs in all these safe seats' where 'often the percentage of people who didn't vote is greater than those who voted for one party'.

Sebastian Payne

Campaign-kick off: 24 hours to go

From our UK edition

Finally, after six weeks of campaigning, endless opinion polls and the semi-TV debates, the final day of the 2015 general election campaign is upon us. David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg will be dashing all over the country to make their final plea to voters, while rumours are beginning to spill out about the conditions for any coalitions. To help guide you through the melée of stories and spin, here is a summary of today’s main election stories. 1. Neck and neck Before the election campaign kicked off properly at the end of March, a poll of polls put Labour on 34 per cent and the Tories on 33 per cent. Six weeks of vigorous campaigning later and barely anything has changed. Yesterday, Survation put Labour on 34 per cent and the Tories on 33 per cent.

Steerpike

Labour release leaflets telling non-English speakers how to vote

From our UK edition

This week Labour was accused of hypocrisy for allowing gender-segregated seating at a party rally. While the party have since defended their position claiming 'there was no forced segregation', many have accused Labour of pandering to the Muslim vote. Now word reaches Steerpike that Labour activists working alongside Gavin Shuker, the Labour Co-operative MP for Luton South, are posting leaflets to the local community which tell non-English speakers exactly how to vote. The flyer helpfully includes instructions telling the reader to vote by placing an X 'next to every candidate with the Labour logo': Of course no instructions as of yet on how to vote if you are a non-English speaker who doesn't wish to plump for Ed Miliband.

Sebastian Payne

A day on the campaign trail with Labour and Ed Miliband

From our UK edition

On Monday, I hopped aboard the Labour ‘battle bus’ for a day on the campaign trail with Ed Miliband. Although each party has a different campaign operation, I was a little surprised to find that journalists are given a bus of their own, travelling separately from the party leadership. But I still managed to gain some insight into Labour’s campaign and how Team Miliband are feeling about the election with in the final stretch. The battle bus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEL4vI-1AXE The campaigning day began at 7:30am, with Labour’s battle bus pulling out of a garage in Westminster. I boarded with two other journalists, from the Financial Times and the Daily Mail.

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

Who is the bigger pillock: Alan Partridge or Steve Coogan?

From our UK edition

Those of us who spent our teens quoting Alan Partridge owe a lot to Steve Coogan. He made my adolescence funnier, at any rate. Yet I know several people who imitated Partridge so much they got lost in character: it became difficult to know when they were being themselves. Funnily enough, the same applies to Coogan himself: in his interviews and ‘real' TV shows, it is often impossible to distinguish between the famous actor and his even more famous creation. During his rants against the Murdoch Empire for Hacked Off, for instance, he could sound very Partridge-like. And his new Labour campaign ad is cheesier than the Partridge promo video for barging on the Norfolk broads. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhw5RHvPalk Someone throw a cow on him!

Steerpike

Cameron wins 81 seat majority in the (junior) General Election

From our UK edition

At last, David Cameron has won an election. First News, a weekly newspaper for school children, organised a national Junior General Election and surprisingly the PM has romped home with 40 per cent of the vote. The Greens beat both Clegg and Farage, and Miliband managed just 22 per cent of the vote. Running these numbers through the BBC's election seat calculator, it would give Cameron 407 seats and a majority of 81. Here are the results in full: David Cameron, Conservative: 40 per cent Ed Miliband, Labour: 22 per cent Natalie Bennett, Green: 18 per cent Nick Clegg, Lib Dem: 9 per cent Nigel Farage, UKIP: 6 per cent Nicola Sturgeon, SNP: 4 per cent Leanne Wood, Plaid Cymru: 1 per cent Numbers that the Tories could only dream of polling on Thursday.

Monday

Ed West

Three reasons why Labour might not actually want to govern

From our UK edition

There’s an episode of The New Statesman in which geologists discover that there’s no more oil in the North Sea and the British economy is about to crash; as a result all the parties try their best to lose the election so as not to carry the can for the next five years. Alan B’Stard, put in charge of the Tory campaign because they think him a liability, appears in the election video with Page 3 girls offering free bingo to the voters. Unfortunately, this proves a huge hit with the electorate. A conspiracy theorist might think this is actually happening today, judging by the inertia of the major parties.

James Forsyth

Comedian Brand u-turns and urges people to vote

From our UK edition

There’ll be satisfaction in the Labour leader’s office today as Russell Brand has done a reverse-ferret and urged his voters to vote and vote Labour. Or, to be more precise, to vote Labour in England—with the exception of Brighton where he wants them to vote Green. He seems to be implicitly urging a vote for the SNP in Scotland. To win Brand over, Miliband channelled his former US grassroots adviser Arnie Graf and talked about community politics and how the idea of a living wage came not from a policy seminar but activists in the US talking to low-paid workers. But Brand’s endorsement is of limited value given that it comes long after the deadline for registering to vote.

Fraser Nelson

Ed Miliband still isn’t being honest about debt. And yes, that matters

From our UK edition

The Guardian’s superb live blog was even better than usual this morning when it covered Twitter’s reaction to the Ed Miliband interview: eight tweets, of which five came from Spectator staff. That’s what I call balance: opinion from the full spectrum of opinion in 22 Old Queen St. We were challenging Miliband's claim when he said the debt was "lower than what we inherited" - it was about £200bn higher. I can’t imagine these tweets went down too well with Guardian readers, because an update emerged later saying that the debt/GDP ratio fell. So was Ed speaking the truth after all? I’m rather keen on this topic.