Uk politics

Nigel Farage has had a torrid few days - exactly as he'd planned. He had all six of his fellow contestants in the TV debate ganging up on him over immigration, just as he'd hoped. He's provoked the Liberal Metropolitan Elite into attacking him over his comments about health tourism and HIV, just as he'd hoped. And today, to cap it all, he's claiming a Tory defection. Mike Whitehead had been the Conservative candidate in Hull West and Hessle, standing against Alan Johnson in the Labour safe seat. The Tories came third here in 2010. Farage said this morning: 'I am delighted to be welcoming Mike to the party at this exciting time. His move to UKIP just underlines that today, the real party of opposition to Labour in the North is UKIP.

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.

If elections are job interviews, as party leaders like to say, then this interview has so far failed to assess applicants on the one part of the job description that most have no experience in - foreign policy and security. This absence was at its most conspicuous this week when the TV debate didn't spare even a cursory nod to global issues. Maybe the lack of contention on foreign policy is an implicit tribute to the Conservatives' steady hand on the tiller? If not, let's hear why. If so, the Conservatives have been surprisingly, some might argue laudably, reluctant to invoke global insecurity as an issue. Security concerns, global instability, and terrorism are important themes that normally mesh well with a serious, strong-headed, incumbent government.

There are many grating phrases in modern British politics. ‘Best practice.’ ‘Fit for purpose.’ ‘Let me explain’ (just bloody well explain!). And that tendency of Labour politicians to preface pretty much everything they say with a schoolmarmish ‘Look’, as in ‘Look here’. As in: ‘You donuts know nothing, so I am going to put you straight.’ But even more grating than those, sat at the top of the pile of temperature-raising sayings, is ‘dog-whistle’. Everyone’s talking about ‘dog-whistle politics’.

Mock Nick Clegg all you like, but he is taking an impressively pragmatic approach to this General Election. The Deputy Prime Minister knows that he might not get as much coverage as the main parties or the insurgent parties if he just says things (though already announcing a lot of your manifesto and charging hacks £750 a day for the pleasure of hanging out in your disturbingly Austin Powers-esque bus might make that a tad more difficult anyway). So to ensure that he does get a modicum of coverage each day, he’s having a picture caption election. On Monday, it was hedgehogs in Solihull. Yesterday he had that selfie with Joey Essex and a cookery class. Today he’s been at a soft play area, though sadly he didn’t dive into the ballpit.

Immigration is a pretty important driver for voters who turn to Ukip. So you would have imagined that the party might have spent a while really making sure that its own policy on the matter is crystal clear. This morning in Dover, Nigel Farage said ‘I’m saying a net level of about 30,000 a year is roughly what we had for 50 years from 1950 almost until the turn of the century’. This seemed to be a bit of an about-turn from the Ukip leader’s decision earlier this month to ditch the 50,000 cap on the number of migrants arriving in the UK each year. Farage dropped the 50,000 target live on the Today programme just days after his immigration spokesman Steven Woolfe set it out at the Ukip conference.

Nick Clegg ain't done yet, and as if to prove how deadly serious he is about winning this election, the Deputy Prime Minister visited a hedgehog sanctuary on his first campaign stop. Probably his least prickly public encounter since 2010. The Liberal Democrats have focussed their initial onslaught focusing on women, with Monday's Guardian reporting that it was 'his mission to win over female voters in a number of his party’s target constituencies': 'Party strategists believe that winning over the female vote will be crucial to their chances of success across a range of key battleground constituencies.' All of which is a little embarrassing when you consider just how poor Clegg's party's record is when it comes to women.