From our UK edition
Labour's manifesto cover has been the cause of much merriment online - creating what the Americans call "subvertisments". ConservativeHome has already lined up some spoofs. We asked Carla Millar, who has done quite a bit of work for The Spectator, to do a version with a mushroom cloud of debt in the middle and the family shielding their eyes. This is the result.
From our UK edition
We've already collected some of the general blogosphere response to Labour's manifesto launch, but this addendum is worth making separately. In a post describing the hostility of the Labour crowd towards the gathered media, Adam Boulton writes (with my highlights): "The crowd, including some cabinet ministers, booed and shouted at questions they didn’t like. Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, had his question interrupted by jeering and Graham Wilson of the Sun was booed just for identifying his newspaper. Labour did not behave like that in the last three elections when the Sun backed them. Gordon Brown was happy to join in this confrontational mood. It was the most substantive aspect of the manifesto event.
From our UK edition
We have some video footage of Brown’s speech at Spectator Live, and you can read Pete’s analysis here. Elsewhere on the Web: Hopi Sen likes the promise on early diagnosis on Cancer care, and the fact that no incredible spending pledges have been included. The Guardian’s Julian Glover attacks a 'meaningless manifesto': 'Ed Miliband, who we are told wrote Labour's manifesto, is fond of saying that the Tories are on the wrong side of the battle of ideas. It's a neat phrase, but an empty one unless you have ideas of your own. On the basis of today's manifesto performance, Labour doesn't.
From our UK edition
"You got that, Britain? We. Are. The. Future. Future, future, future. The Tories are the past. We are the Future. The future that is fair for all. We are that future. For all." And so, more or less, went Gordon Brown's pitch to the nation at Labour's manifesto launch. Except it lasted a good hour and a quarter. And it involved a eye-wateringly fuzzy screen behind Brown's head. And a needless introduction from Harriet Harman. So if you managed to tune into it all, then well done: your enthusiasm for politics knows no bounds. But Labour's problems today weren't so much presentational as political. After thirteen years in power, Brown was always going to struggle to convincingly sell this "future" shtick.
From our UK edition
1240: And Brown rounds proceedings off by saying "future" a few times. Did you manage to stay awake? Never mind - I did, so that you wouldn't have to. My immediate thoughts below, of course. But I've given the actual manifesto a quick read-through as I've been typing - and will report back shortly. That's it for this live blog. Thanks for tuning in, and all that. 1237: Brown says that "we are the party of everyone on middle or modest incomes in this country". Hm - try telling that to everyone who lost out from the 10p tax debacle. 1235: This is dragging on. The Tories should be taking lessons from this event - things need to be clearer and more direct.
From our UK edition
Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary and former attack dog, seems to have been cast into outer darkness. As with Oliver Letwin’s disappearing act in the 2001, Labour is toasting this unofficial scalp. Denis MacShane has been adding poison to the potion this morning. The Tories are paying a heavy price for Grayling’s B&B gaffe, but it’s self-inflicted. Grayling’s comments were cackhanded and I think he is wrong, but they were nowhere near as controversial as was claimed – he was seeking a clarification of the law, not calling for Sandi Toksvig to be lynched. I doubt Grayling will be Home Secretary but such a senior Shadow minister can’t hide away for ever.
From our UK edition
You know it's the day you've all been waiting for, CoffeeHousers – the day of Labour's manifesto launch. Last Thursday, Douglas Alexander described the document as a "progressive programme worthy of these testing times". So, well, it must be good, mustn't it? Problem is, this manifesto risks going the same way as the Budget. So much of it has been so heavily trailed, that there's a danger we've already heard it all – and that it will be met with weary indifference by the media and the public alike.
From our UK edition
David Cameron takes a few journalists with him on each of his one-day tours, and it's my turn tomorrow: 6am start. I should be able to get half an hour or so with him, to do an interview for The Spectator. As is customary, I'll try and ask him some questions on behalf of CoffeeHousers - so please add any thoughts as a comment below.
From our UK edition
The transformation of Nick Clegg from moderate Europeanist to a populist continues apace. The Lib Dem leader is very serious about capturing the anti-politics mood among the electorate - no easy feat for some who looks as Establishment as the rest. Though he will likely be pleased with today's Observer interview, I wonder whether he will, in retrospect, feel comfortable with his view that a small Tory majority would somehow make a Cameron government illegitimate and that Britain could be plunged into "Greek-style unrest" if cuts were introduced. Where to begin? The electoral system works the way it does. It has many inbuilt problems - particularly for the Tories - but until it is reformed it produces lawful and legitimate governments.
From our UK edition
This poster by the LibDems is perhaps the most dishonest one of the campaign so far - and Vince Cable has pretty well admitted it to Jon Sopel on the Politics Show. Here's the exchange. Jon Sopel: I mean let’s leave aside whether or whether not there is a black hole in the Tory’s finances. Leave that to one side. You don’t know factually, that they are going to raise VAT. That is your conjecture. St Vince Cable: It is a conjecture and it’s a reasonable assumption and I wouldn’t claim anymore than that. JS: And that £389 is a rough figure plucked... VC: "It’s a ball park estimate of what it would require in order to fill that gap, and it seems a reasonable way of expressing that argument.
From our UK edition
Underneath the IoS poll which David mentioned earlier there's a set of election predictions from professional pollsters. Differing margins of victory aside, seven-out-of-eight of them foresee a Tory majority in a few weeks time. I mention this not just because it's worth, erm, mentioning – but because a poll of readers over at our new Spectator Live election site produced a similar result. 85 percent of you predict that the election will produce a Tory majority. That's very almost seven-out-of-eight. I promise I won't ram Spectator Live down your collective throat every minute, but do check out the full results on this page here.
From our UK edition
Lying is a politician's occupational hazard. The Independent on Sunday has published a Com Res poll confirming that truism. The majority of voters do not believe that David Cameron and Gordon Brown are being honest about how they will tackle the deficit. We voters resent being taken for fools. If Brown and Cameron are being disingenuous about the economy, the honest Sage of Twickenham benefits - the Liberals are storming the marginals, a hung parliament is odds-on according to some pollsters. Is Vince Cable honest about reducing the deficit? Emphatically not. One minute he’s against a VAT rise, but refuses to rule it out the next. He’s in favour of unilateral charges on banks, but not if they fund a tax break for some married couples.
From our UK edition
I think we all expected this election campaign to be fought a few inches below the belt. But, as Iain Dale and Dizzy say, Labour's tactic of mailing scaremongering leaflets to cancer sufferers is some new kind of low. I mean, just imagine how it would feel to receive, as a cancer patient or an immediate family member, a leaflet which politicises the problem to the point of suggesting that your care would be jeapordised by voting for another party. And then imagine how it would feel if you have been specifically targeted because of your connections with the illness, as seems to have been the case here. Well, it defies belief that this is how the party of government is going about "restoring trust in our broken politics," or whatever they say.
From our UK edition
The News of the World has its expensive and much-awaited ICM poll of the marginals tomorrow. There is some good news for Cameron, and some not-so-good news. First: 66 percent of voters in the marginals agree with the message "it's time for change". Bad news: a surprisingly large number think that Nick Clegg represents that change. A Lib Dem surge means that Tory swing is just 6 percent in the marginals, versus 5 percent nationally. Where is the Lord Ashcroft magic? In James's political column this week, he says the Tories had been so confident about the marginals that they reckon they need a 5-point lead nationally to win, rather than the 8-point lead previously assumed. The News of the World/ICM poll challenges that narrative.
From our UK edition
Since The Times moved its leaders on to page two, they've also taken on a new vitality. For years, they were the voice of solid good sense. It was pretty difficult to disagree with them. Now, they are more polemical, more risk-taking - and more wrong. But I'm not complaining: I far prefer reading a fiesty opinion with which I disagree, than boring opinion that I nod quietly along with. And I could not disagree more with the leader today denouncing Cameron's marriage tax break. Let's kick off: "This is surely no time to be giving money away so that people can just carry on doing what they are already doing, namely being married. In a long philosophical journey in Opposition, the Tories appear to have alighted on moral authoritarianism advanced by economic interventionism.
From our UK edition
Sunday, Bloody Sunday. Someday the Bloody Sunday Inquiry will be published. It has taken 12 years to conduct and it has cost £200 million (about the going rate for state sponsored marriage, or Aston Villa). £2.50p per head is extortionate, so I’d quite like to see Lord Savile’s findings. I don’t expect to enjoy the experience. The report is said to confirm what was already known: confronted by an angry and possibly violent mob, heavily outnumbered British soldiers panicked and opened fire. It will be an expensive impertinence, like reading an idiot child's private school report. Anyway, the government will not publish the report until well after the election. I hate to disappoint you reader but this is not a 2010 Labour efficiency saving.
From our UK edition
Why vote for Cameron? The reasons for voting against Gordon Brown are so numerous that the positive pro-Tory reasons for voting are often lost. This week's Spectator gives you all the ammo you need to win around wavering friends, colleagues and family. We have restricted ourselves to the ten most compelling points. I summarise them below: 1. School reform. In itself, it's enough reason to vote Tory. Gove has specifically promise that within four years of a Tory government everyone will have an independent school offering to educate their kid for free. This should have been a 1981 Tory proposal, but Keith Joseph lost a battle with the civil service (after he recruited a young Cambridge graduate named Oliver Letwin to help him fight it). 2.
From our UK edition
This morning, we've already seen the two primary attacks which will be used against the marriage tax break outlined by George Osborne in the Times today. The first came courtesy of Vince Cable, who said it represents a "derisory" sum of £3 a week for those who benefit from it. And the second was from Ed Balls – who else? – who labelled the policy as "discriminatory," because it doesn't cover every married person, and nor does it account for couples who split. Or as he rather suggestively put it: "if your husband beats you up and leaves you you get no support." One thing worth noting is how the Tories' opponents aren't majoring on a fiscal irresponsibility angle, as they've been trying to with the national insurance cut.
From our UK edition
A copy of a letter that George Osborne sent to Alistair Darling today: Alistair Darling The Labour Party 39 Victoria Street London SW1H 0HA 9 April 2010 Dear Alistair, In the course of today, the Labour Party’s economic policy has collapsed in a heap of contradictions. In the morning, you attacked our efficiency plans on the grounds that they would reduce public sector headcount – but by lunchtime your own Treasury Minister, Stephen Timms, admitted that your own spending plans meant that “there will be some job losses” (The Daily Politics, BBC 2, 9 April 2010).
From our UK edition
The witterings of Phil Woolas about immigration yesterday - where he accused The Spectator of contorting immigration figures and double-counting immigrants - have landed him in plenty trouble. Stephen Timms was on the Daily Politics today and conceded that Woolas was talking out of his hat. They weren't our figures, they were from the ONS - and compiled under orders from Eurostat with its Labour Force Survey (LFS) scheme. Andrew Neil has written it up in a blog here. The government is at sea because even ministers in charge of the relevant departments have no idea about the scale of immigration in Britain. This wee farrago brings three lessons for the Conservatives. 1. Honesty about immigration is crucial.