In this View from 22 podcast special, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss the final appointments in David Cameron's new Cabinet and what they show about Cameron's approach to party management. We also discuss David Miliband's brutal interview about his brother's term as Labour leader and why Nigel Farage has decided to hang on as leader of Ukip.
He's gone, now he's back. After four days in the political wilderness, Nigel Farage has returned as leader of Ukip. In a slightly bizarre statement, the party's chairman Steve Crowther said Farage was 'persuaded by the NEC to withdraw his resignation and remains leader of Ukip.' So what changed his mind, after promising to resign 'within 10 minutes' of defeat? Speaking to those with a knowledge of the situation, I understand that Farage was genuinely ready to give up the position and the result in South Thanet came as a relief. His campaign team believe they did everything possible to get him elected but it clearly wasn't enough — or the limits of 'Farageism' have been reached. Either way, he was ready for a break.
Well, when Nigel Farage said he might come back as Ukip leader, we didn't expect it would be quite so soon. Today the party's NEC unanimously rejected Farage's resignation, on the basis that the Ukip membership did not want him to go. Steve Crowther, Chairman of UKIP, said: 'The NEC also concluded that UKIP's general election campaign had been a great success. We have fought a positive campaign with a very good manifesto and despite relentless, negative attacks and an astonishing last minute swing to the Conservatives over fear of the SNP, that in these circumstances, 4 million votes was an extraordinary achievement. On that basis Mr Farage withdrew his resignation and will remain leader of UKIP.
Yes, yes, I know it's supposed to be 'unfair' that Ukip ended up with only one MP while securing 13 per cent of the popular vote. But that's first-past-the-post for you. You have to win a seat to get into Parliament. The British electorate was offered the chance to to ditch FPTP back in 2011 and said, nope, we'll keep the unfair system. As for Ukip coming second and third in all those Labour seats, it's impressive but I suspect not terribly significant. White northern working-class voters were protesting against the fact that none of the major parties gave a toss about the destruction of their communities by the merciless progress of modernisation.
Forget Vince Cable. Forget, if you can, Ed Balls (and I know that’s hard, because what a joyous result that was). Expel from your mind the image of Nick Clegg crying into his cornflakes this morning while texting his old pals in the Euro-oligarchy to see if they will give him a new plush job that involves no contact with pesky plebs. For last night there was an even bigger loser than those guys. Russell Brand. Or ‘Rusty Rockets’, as his politics-packed Twitterfeed has it. Rusty being the operative word, for now we know that the much-hyped ability of slebs like Brand to sway public sentiment is in a serious state of decomposition.
Whoever comes top on Thursday, Labour has won the only poll that really matters – that of Britain’s beloved celebrities, with recent endorsements by Steve Coogan, Delia Smith, Robert Webb, Ronnie O’Sullivan and Jo Brand, among others. The Tories in contrast can only muster a few self-made businesswomen and Peter Stringfellow. https://twitter.com/PJStringfellow/status/595577294355238915 Labour’s most important conquest, however, has to be comedian-turned-people’s poet Russell Brand, who previously suggested that voting was a waste of time, but now backs Ed Miliband. When it comes to this 21st-century political colossus, no one can better Rod Liddle’s words from a few months ago: ‘That’s why I enjoy my mornings in bed with Russell.
In the 'most unpredictable election in a generation', it's a fool's errand to make specific calls. However, it is possible to outline what the political landscape might look like on Friday morning. Throughout election night, there will be an obsession with whether the Conservatives or Labour end up as the largest party, far beyond its actual importance to forming the next government. If we're at that stage of the discussion, it is Ed Miliband who will eventually end up in Downing Street, even if a minority Conservative administration has to be be formed and fall first. Labour will take dozens of seats in England, including almost all their targets from the Liberal Democrats and a sizeable number of those from the Conservatives.
Ukip has four key target seats in Essex and Kent it hopes to win on Thursday. In order of likelihood of victory, Clacton, Rochester & Strood, South Thanet and Thurrock are the constituencies to watch on election night. I visited three of these seats yesterday, to find out how each of the candidates are feeling about the impending election, as well as their predictions of how well Ukip will do. 1. South Thanet Ukip candidate: Nigel Farage Last Ashcroft poll: Ukip two points behind Tories WATCH: Highlights from @Nigel_Farage's final public meeting of the campaign in South Thanet #ge2015 #ukip https://t.co/sIRqo4PtKg — Sebastian Payne (@SebastianEPayne) May 2, 2015 Nigel Farage held his final three public meetings on Saturday.
Ukip is becoming a two-faced party. One side is made up of credible political challengers, while the other side comprises LibLabCon conspiracy theorists. Since the last election, the party has made progress by promoting this serious side, while sidelining the fruitcakes. But over the last few days, the more loony side of the party has reappeared, thanks to the party making the BBC a campaign issue.
By this time next week, the election will all be over and it will be a question of seats, leaderships and coalitions. With six days of campaigning left, today will be dominated by the fallout from last night’s Question Time special. David Cameron put in a good turn, Ed Miliband did not and Nick Clegg appeared to sail on through without much impact. To help guide you through the melée of stories and spin, here is a summary of today’s main election stories. 1. Miliband's not sorry The special edition of Question Time last night with the three main party leaders was the best television of the campaign. Cameron, Miliband and Clegg were hauled over the coals by an excellent audience in Leeds, who were impressively well informed and took no prisoners.
Tonight’s ‘Question Time’-style TV debates will be followed by what has become probably the most hated aspect of this rather uninspiring general election campaign: the spin room. This spectacle of journalists interviewing journalists as they listen to frontbenchers from all the parties parroting lines about how their leader was the best (or, in the Tory case, how well Nicola Sturgeon has been doing) is odd enough inside the room, let alone for those watching at home. The way the politicians spinning talk is even less natural than usual: it’s like a Westminster version of Made In Chelsea, stuffed with people acting at being actors.
After Camilla Long claimed on last Friday’s Have I Got News for You that she had spent more time in South Thanet than Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader failed to see the funny side. In fact such offence was taken by party members that one of his team took the unusual step of calling in Kent Police. The police have since rejected the complaint and word now reaches Steerpike that fractions are forming in the party over whether it was wise to report the incident in the first place. ‘We didn’t report her,’ insists a source close to the leader. Instead they say that they merely ‘reported the incident, which is her comments plus the BBC airing them'.
Will there be a Portillo moment on election night with any of the party leaders? Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage are two most likely leaders to lose and Lord Ashcroft has polled Sheffield Hallam and South Thanet to find out how safe the Lib Dem and Ukip leaders are. As the chart above shows, Farage and Clegg are still in very tight races. In Sheffield Hallam, Labour is now just one point ahead of the Lib Dems — compared to a three point lead in November last year. In South Thanet, Ashcroft puts Ukip two points behind the Tories, compared to a one point lead in November 2014. Although the two parties are battling for first place, Labour is drifting into third.
At the Political Book Awards earlier this year, Matthew Goodwin and Rob Ford took home the £10,000 top prize for their book on the rise of Ukip, Revolt on the Right. However, word reaches Steerpike that despite their success the literary duo have rather diverging views when it comes to their subject. In fact, the pair's bickering on social media caused one user to liken it to 'the Twitter version of seeing parents having a row'. Ford, who lectures at the University of Manchester, took to Twitter to assert that he is the co-author of the book after Goodwin failed to name check him in a tweet: .@GoodwinMJ @DPJHodges I co-authored that and I think this is a terrible poll for them there. Getting trounced in key target.
Any answers? Nigel Farage accused the audience in the BBC opposition leaders’ debate of being left-wing. Need insulting an audience destroy a political career? — Former US Vice President Dan Quayle did it on a number of occasions, telling an audience of American Samoans in 1989: ‘You all look like happy campers to me.’ Two years later he upset the American Bar Association by asking: ‘Does America really need 70% of the world’s lawyers?’ — Current US Vice President Joe Biden told a crowd in Wisconsin in 2010: ‘You’re the dullest audience I’ve ever spoken to.’ — Nigel Farage has done it before.
Home The prospect of a parliamentary alliance between Labour and the Scottish National Party injected an element of fear into the election campaign. The SNP manifesto promised to increase spending and to find a way to stop the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent. Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, said she wanted to make Labour in government ‘bolder and better’. Lord Forsyth, a former Conservative Scottish secretary, said that the building up of the SNP, to take seats in Scotland, was a ‘dangerous view which threatens the integrity of our country’. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said the Tories should not be ‘talking up’ the SNP. Even the Democratic Unionists began to eye prospects for advantage in a hung parliament.
The Ukip fox may have entered the Westminster henhouse but how many more chickens will it kill? ComRes has released a new poll revealing that Ukip is trailing in third place in ‘ten Conservative-held seats which Ukip have targeted’. Across the polled seats, the Tories are on 39 per cent, Labour on 28 and Ukip trailing on 21. While the latter party's vote share has increased by 15 per cent since 2010, ComRes's findings suggests they will struggle to win thanks to the collapse in the Liberal Democrat vote. According to the poll, a quarter of Lib Dem voters in these seats say they will now back Labour and 21 per cent will back the Tories. But Ukip is not happy at all with this poll, with party source describing it as a 'terrible way of doing the poll'.
Nigel Farage has fought off accusations that he's an invisible candidate in South Thanet, claiming to have held more public meetings than all of the other candidates put together. But are Ukip getting ahead of themselves in the ultra-tight race on the Kent coast? Mr S hears that invitations are already circulating for an election night party in the constituency, hosted by fun-loving donor Arron Banks. Organising the victory party two weeks out from polling day looks complacent at best. Sources familiar with party planning have revealed to Mr S that the multi-millionaire tycoon has invited people to join him in the constituency on election night and drinks will certainly be served. Yet Ukip spinners stonewalled when asked to 'confirm or deny' that the event was taking place.
Nigel Farage may see himself as the quintessential British politician, but is he modelling himself on a national comedy treasure? Mr S's colleague Sebastian Payne noted that in Lord Ashcroft’s latest focus groups, voters reckoned that the Ukip leader ‘would only watch British comedies’ in his spare time, such as Only Fools And Horses. One respondent even said 'he models himself on Boycie’. Judge for yourself: But Boycie is not happy with the comparison. John Challis, who plays Boycie in the series, told SunNation ‘Farage sounds nothing like me; he’s going to have to try harder.’ But Challias did find one similarity. ‘I noticed he wears a warm, British coat like mine, but no moustache'.
Isle of Thanet, Kent ‘Are you having me on?’ a lady shouts from inside her bungalow. ‘I’m going back in the bath.’ As with many residents of Ramsgate, this voter, who is wearing nothing but a towel, can not believe Nigel Farage is on her doorstep. The Ukip leader belts out his hearty laugh as her husband admits the pair will be voting Ukip — another tick on the clipboard. Farage's cabal of sign carriers and bodyguards shuffle towards the next house before we are interrupted by a group of goths keen for a selfie. They appear too young to vote but Farage happily obliges. Has he got a chance of winning here? In three hours of traipsing around doorsteps of South Thanet, before ending up in the pub, there were no negative reactions to Farage.