Labour party

Labour is struggling to win back voters in Scotland because of social media conspiracy theories that are difficult to debunk, the party’s campaign chief said this morning. Speaking at a LabourList event, Douglas Alexander recounted a story about a voter who supported independence and bought into a conspiracy theories about the oil companies she read on Facebook. This echo chamber poses a great challenge for parties attempting to tell the truth, he said: ‘We’re used to a politics where we share facts but diverge on opinions. We are confronting — increasingly because of the rise of social media — a politics where people’s social media feeds can be an echo chamber for at the best of their opinion opinions and worst of their own prejudices.

Another week, another set of polls that put Labour and the Tories on an almost level footing. In his weekly national poll, Lord Ashcroft has the Conservatives two points ahead on 31 per cent — down three points from last week — while Labour are on 29 per cent. Today’s Guardian/ICM poll also has the Conservatives slightly ahead, by one point, while Labour has jumped three points to 35 per cent. But the latest The Sun/YouGov’s poll tonight shows the opposite: this poll has Labour two points ahead of the Tories, who are down to 32 per cent. Another poll from Populus yesterday put the two main parties on 34 per cent each. Two weeks to go until the election campaign properly begins and there is still no clear frontrunner.

The Liberal Democrats sense an opportunity in all this speculation about who the Tories and Labour would do deals with in the event of a hung parliament. They believe that they can position themselves as the responsible party that will keep the country in the centre ground in contrast to the other smaller parties. Today, in his speech to the party’s spring conference, Clegg ruled out joining any coalition that involved the SNP or Ukip. He also tried to use the moment to reinforce voters’ worries about either main party governing on their own. He argued that the Tories would cut needlessly—‘Cows moo. Dogs bark. And Tories cut.

When Ed Miliband ran for the Labour leadership in 2010, his supporters boasted that he spoke human. Tonight, in a question time session with a group of young people broadcast on BBC3, Miliband showed flashes of his ability to connect with an audience. But, overall, it was a patchy performance. Miliband was very good on some subjects and dealt neatly with some left-field questions. However, he still doesn’t have the right answer to the question of whether he would do a deal with the SNP after the election in the event of a hung parliament. He dismissed the ideas as ‘a piece of nonsense from the Tories’. But, in contrast to a grand coalition with the Tories, he didn’t actually rule it out. Predictably, Miliband got asked about drugs.

Justine Miliband has given an interview to the BBC, a sort of ‘back my husband, my hero’ contribution to the Labour election campaign. She starts by talking about the pressures on the family and how ‘being a working mother’, she hasn’t really had a chance to think about what it would be like for the family with Ed in Downing Street.

Things became heated in the commons today after Barry Sheerman told Esther McVey to stop being a 'hard-hearted Hannah' during a Department for Work and Pensions questions. The incident occurred after Sheerman voiced his concerns over the department's handling of the government's welfare reforms. McVey has taken none too kindly to the term, which is a reference to an Ella Fitzgerald song. The Conservative MP says that it is 'not the first time that the opposition benches have been like this to me'. Sheerman meanwhile insists his innocence, claiming it was not a sexist comment.

Two politicians put in very assured and impressive performances on Marr this morning - if you can include nimbly dodging questions that you don’t want to answer ‘impressive’. of course, within the parameters of the way politicians are expected to behave, Caroline Flint and Philip Hammond did very well because they didn’t give anything away that they didn’t want to, and they’d clearly practised rather a lot in order to stop themselves giving away that information. Flint was asked to rule out a pact between Labour and the SNP.

‘What I'm seeing in this election is the influence of these big American advisers and it's becoming the most negative, personal and nasty campaign I've ever seen.’ So said Nigel Farage to LBC this morning, as he promised to ‘rise above’ personal attacks in the coming election slog. Stung by rumours about his declining health, fingers are being pointed about a certain antipodean master of the dark arts, but are Ukip really in any position to lecture on the Americanisation of our political process?