From our UK edition
Motherwell Rules. Obviously, like... He's a nice chap really... Also from The Thick of It: Peter Mannion: This is the trouble with the public, they’re fucking horrible! Emma Messinger: Peter, you can’t say the public are fucking horrible. Peter Mannion: Yes I can, I’ve met them. All true, all too true.
From our UK edition
Well the only good thing, from Labour's perspective, is that this has happened the day before the final debate and not several days before it. So there's just a chance it will be a 36 hour story, not a 72 hours one. Clearly it's not a great idea for the Prime Minister to be heard calling a middle-aged widow he's just encountered on the mean streets of Rochdale a terrible "bigoted woman". The video is excruciating and demonstrates why Labour have generally been wise to keep Gordon away from the general public during this campaign: The comments once Brown has escaped to the supposed-safety of his car are pretty awful, but it's the small talk with Gillian Duffy that is truly painful. Here's a man who, whatever his other qualities, is not cut out for modern retail politics.
From our UK edition
The other day, writing in the New York Times, Tyler Cowen suggested: The received wisdom in the United States is that deep spending cuts are politically impossible. But a number of economically advanced countries, including Sweden, Finland, Canada and, most recently, Ireland, have cut their government budgets when needed. Most relevant, perhaps, is Canada, which cut federal government spending by about 20 percent from 1992 to 1997. [...] To be sure, the spending cuts meant fewer government services, most of all for health care, and big cuts in agricultural subsidies. But Canada remained a highly humane society, and American liberals continue to cite it as a beacon of progressive values.
From our UK edition
The other day a wise friend, lamenting the "madness" of the people carried away with Cleggmania, fretted that it all amounts to the beginning of the end. For the Union, I mean. These days, you see, it's Unionists who are forever whistling an old song and always wondering if it's for the last time. I didn't, I admit, quite follow his argument but it had something to do with the Liberals in power, the advent of proportional representation leading eventually and inexorably to an English parliament and thus loosening the ties that bind to the point that they may be severed with a single blow of a Damoclean sword. Or something like that anyway. Conventional wisdom in Nationalist circles has always been that the independence cause is best advanced by a Conservative victory.
From our UK edition
Egging? Check. Fisticuffs? Check. Smoke-bombs? Check. This is what Ukraine's hung parliament looks like... The dispute is over whether or not Russia's lease on the naval base at Sebastapol should be extended. The opposition, as you can see, are not happy. Whether this adds weight to Tory warnings about the dire consequences of a hung parliament (and proportional representation!) is a different matter entirely...
From our UK edition
Not a great showing by Jeremy Paxman last night as he wrestled with a Welshman* (who seemed to be named after an Icelandic volcano) and lost. And it wasn't even close. Immensely entertaining, therefore. The real fun starts just after the two minute mark: *Plaid Cymru's** economics advisor Eurfyl ap Gwilym. **Typo fixed, Jeremy.
From our UK edition
So it seems you have to vote Conservative to accept the party's invitation to join the government of Great Britain? Who knew? Tory warnings of the dire consequences of a hung parliament are understandable but, I suspect, unfortunate. There is little evidence that the electorate believes that a hung parliament will be a disaster, far less than they can be cajoled into thinking that they're letting Britain down if they don't vote Conservative. And that, my friends, is the underlying message sent by the Tories' blitz against a hung parliament. A hung election might not be ideal but it might also be a fitting end to this exhausted, depressing parliament. But it need not be the disaster the Tories claim. The PDF they released today - and the advert - is thin gruel.
From our UK edition
The ideas buried in the Tory manifesto - buried I say because they've not spent nearly enough time explaining them - are good and classically conservative. Family, Community, Country. Those are the pillars. But they've not been able to build upon this good work and instead the "Big Society" has left voters cold and confused. What does it mean? And that's left the Tories vulnerable. During the second debate Gordon Brown even suggested that the Tories' Big Idea was little more than a kind of "DIY NHS" - a double calumny since the NHS is the one area that the Conservatives have decided to leave well alone. So the idea has been corrupted and people think that they've got to come home from work and then set up a school or something. That's not how it works.
From our UK edition
It makes sense for the Conservatives to argue that a hung parliament doesn't do the country many favours. It's in their interest to make this case and, certainly, there's something to be said for the Conservatives winning a clear and comfortable majority. That would be preferable to a narrow Tory victory, not least since the government would not be held to ransom by a handful of recalcitrant backbenchers. But, as matters stand right now, a comfortable majority looks unlikely.
From our UK edition
Fed up with how all the political parties emphasise the need for spending restraint while promising increased investment in popular services? Fed up too with all the talk of "savage" or "Thatcher-level" spending cuts without any clear indication where these savings may be made? Well now, thanks to the Financial Times, you can play Fantasy Treasury, swinging an axe through Whithall to find billions of cuts to reduce the deficit while avoiding huge tax increases. Ticking the boxes is easy: it becomes a little harder when you the FT tells you what each of these cuts actually means "on the ground". In other words: most of the cuts will be unpopular. Which is why the pols are wise enough not to talk about them.
From our UK edition
A good spot by Ewan Hoyle: The Telegraph has gone after Nick Clegg's support for a more sensible approach to the "War on Drugs". It seems that when he was an MEP the Liberal Democrat leader supported decriminalisation. This, we are supposed to believe, is a Bad Thing. Which makes it amusing or interesting that way back in 2005 David Cameron also called for "fresh thinking and a new approach" to drugs policy. That, as you know, means keeping at least an open mind about decriminalisation.
From our UK edition
I am not surprised that Paddy Ashdown says the Liberal Democrats cannot work with the Conservatives. He would say that wouldn't he? After all, Ashdown came close to selling his party to New Labour, lock, stock and barrel. Nevertheless, the idea that the Tories and Liberals cannot work together (though doggedly contested by this blog and a few others) is by now Westminster's latest piece of Conventional Wisdom*. I doubt that Andrew Neil likes to think of himself as a purveyor of the CW but there you have it: even he thinks a Con-Lib arrangement highly improbable. Guido thinks differently and so do I. True, Nick Clegg would need to secure the agreement of his party before making any deal with Cameron and true too that this is usually seen as a major obstacle.
From our UK edition
Ian Leslie says much of what needs to be said about the Tories new and gimmicky tweak to the constitution - that anyone who becomes Prime Minister between elections must call an election within six months - a proposal that, as Leslie puts it, is "at once carelessly radical and hopelessly irrelevant." It's also yet another indication that we now have an uneasy, perhaps even unhappy, hybrid political system that is neither fully Presidential nor fully parliamentary. We can see which way the wind is blowing, mind you. And this raises other questions too: all the party leaders pledge to restore parliament and increase its ability to scrutinise and perhaps even check the executive.
From our UK edition
No-one should be surprised that the SNP are going to court to try and change the terms and conditions of this week's final "Leaders' Debate". What may be more surprising is that the Nationalists have a point. A limited point perhaps but a palpable one nonetheless. The BBC would indeed seem to be abandoning its commitment (questionable at the best of times anyway, mind) to "balance" and "fairness" by broadcasting the debates in Scotland (and Wales) without any nationalist involvement. It is not a satisfactory situation. Nor, however is the proposed SNP solution: include an SNP politician in the BBC debate. It is hard to see what value this would add for English viewers who do, after all, make up 85% of the electorate.
From our UK edition
Jonathan Freedland is surely right: Labour's best hope, now that the electorate appears to have decided that "change" matters* and dismissed Labour's pretensions to offer that change, is to maximise its core vote in the hope of avoiding an electoral meltdown that would, say, leave them with fewer than 200 seats in the new parliament. If Labour aren't quite the walking dead the Tories were in 1997 that's because of the current constituency boundaries, not because there's any more life in the Labour campaign.
From our UK edition
Well, again, over to you chaps: what do you think of this one? Watching this and I'm afraid the unworthy thought occurs: David Cameron isn't actually very good at delivering a speech. Perhaps that's a little unfair. Better, maybe, to say that he's not a natural orator. There is, in this campaign anyway, something missing. These clips are neither one thing nor another, neither a fireside chat nor a fully-trumpeted stemwinder. Instead, he falls somewhere in between and the result is oddly discordant - as though he aims for the full Lloyd George only to restrain himself for fear that it would sound and look ridiculous. The result is a delivery that, sometimes at least, is both passionless and lacking in reassurance.
From our UK edition
May this Scotsman wish all his English friends and readers a joyous St George's Day? Why yes he may. And does. Here, for your delectation, are Flanders & Swann performing their splendid Song of Patriotic Prejudice. Great stuff.
From our UK edition
First things first: SKY lost. A debate that was supposed to be about foreign policy scarcely touched on many of the bigger, more interesting issues in the world. Nothing about China, Russia, Iran, Islam, Israel-Palestine, Africa, terrorism, etc etc. The ability of a British government to influence some of the issues arising in these parts of the world may be limited but it would be interesting, nevertheless, to hear what the leaders had to say about them. Instead there was europe, nuclear weapons and a brief detour into Afghanistan to allow the leaders to dust-off their favourite Afghan anecdotes (jogging! Mechanics!). Despite that serious limitation it was another surprisingly entertaining contest and, in points terms, a much closer one than last week's.
From our UK edition
Well, yes, it probably will have some effect. But as Jonathan Freedland argues Clegg may survive the press's assault with his dignity and credibility more or less intact. Indeed, the entire episode might have the effect of firming up some support for Clegg. There willl be some voters who see it as proof that the Liberals must be doing something right and others who feel that it will be worth endorsing Clegg just to spite everyone else. It occurs to me that the Liberal Democrat surge is not quite unprecedented. That is, it can reasonably be compared, in some respects at least, to the SNP's campaign during the Scottish parliamentary elections in 2007.
From our UK edition
Ah, the majesty of the British press! The Telegraph splashes on the fact that various Lib Dem donors funded a researcher and that these funds were paid into his own bank account. A curious, perhaps even sloppy, arangement that may do Clegg some damage but that does not seem to be especially venal not least beacuse the contributions were declared to the fees office and the Electoral Commission. "Stuff and nonsense" declared Paxman on Newsnight and I doubt the story, while not good for Clegg, has anything more than dwarf legs. Then the Mail splashes on Nick Clegg in Nazi slur on Britain as he claims 'our delusions of grandeur' at winning war are more a cross to bear than German guilt.