Fraser Nelson

The Sunday Times Rich List is out today – and it says a lot about Britain. Mainly: what type of country are we? One that reads that supplement with admiration, or with outrage? I’d argue that the former, but this runs contrary to the bovine populism being encouraged by Labour. Ed Miliband wants to raise the top rate of tax to 52 per cent which, as he knows, will raise next to no money. The real purpose of that tax rise is to perform a basic populist manoeuvre: identify an enemy (the highly-paid) and then promise to hurt them. Today, it’s landlords: rent would be capped by the government. Like all left-wing populists, he is out to draw dividing lines: tenant vs landlord, worker vs employer, rich vs poor.

Our last five Spectator debates have sold out, so we’re adding a new one at short notice - only for our subscribers. It's an election briefing on Friday, 1 May where James Forsyth and I will go through the campaign as it looks so far, discuss the latest polling (and how to interpret it), what the campaign chiefs are thinking - and then talk about what lies ahead. There'll be a cash bar, and we may need the drink. Normally, the events are about £40, and even then they sell out. But this one will be at a special subscriber rate of £12, thanks to the generous sponsorship of the gorgeous Corinthia Hotel, where it will be held. It's just next to Charing Cross tube, and a five minute walk from Westminster.

In this week's Spectator, out tomorrow, James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson have interviewed the Prime Minister David Cameron. He discusses why even his closest colleagues think he needs to show more passion and warns that Nicola Sturgeon wants the next government to be a 'car crash'. Here is an extended preview...  David Cameron is sitting underneath a sign that reads quiet carriage, speaking loudly enough to be heard in the next carriage. He knows that even his closest allies are worried he may lose the election if he doesn’t show more passion, so he has been trying to compensate in recent days. He chops the air with his hands as he speaks, furrows his brow, and sounds a little more angry. He has no end of passion, he says.

Nicola Sturgeon met my Auntie Patsy over the weekend, then was kind enough to tweet a picture of their encounter (below). Seeing her sandwiched between the two people most likely to break up the union was odd, but so was discovering that many members of my extended family are now voting SNP. Aunt Patsy is, I’m afraid, a typical example: like 1 in 50 Scots she has joined the SNP in the last seven months. She wasn’t really into politics until recently, but has caught the bug (there is a lot of it about in Scotland). .@FraserNelson just met your lovely (@theSNP voting) auntie in Inverurie. She says hello pic.twitter.

The jobs miracle continues – two million new jobs have now been created since David Cameron took over. The Tories are rightly boasting about all of this today, even if they're keeping quiet about the fact that half of those new jobs have gone to foreign-born workers. Over the last five years, Cameron has overseen more job creation than any other peacetime Prime Minister, as the above chart shows. And he did this in a bust, not a boom. He cut taxes for employers, and for employees. He reformed welfare. Result: the greatest job-creation boom in UK history. Employers are so keen to hire that there are now more job vacancies than ever before: And there's never been a greater share of the adult population in work.

A spectre is haunting Europe — and knocking on the door of Downing Street. It has installed a president in France and a mayor in New York. It is causing mayhem in Spain and Greece and insurgency in Scotland and it may yet halt Hillary Clinton’s march to the White House. This idea — left-wing populism — is a radical, coherent and modern response to the financial crisis and the hardship suffered since. It is being effectively harnessed by Ed Miliband, taking him within touching distance of victory. And it may well become the creed that guides the next five years of British government. The Labour manifesto that was published this week is a response to the new populist mood.

“I’ve got it too," said David Cameron, whipping out the ‘contract with Britain’ he published five years ago. His team seems have prepared him for the format of Evan Davis's BBC interviews: confront the subject with discomfiting material, probe a bit and see what happens. But he was less prepared for being challenged from the right.  Davis asked him on his failure to commit to the basic Nato minimum of spending 2pc of GDP on defence - in spite of his badgering other countries to do so at the Nato summit in Wales. "I don’t think that you’re willing to say Britain will stick to its international obligation on defence," he said. “We’re keeping it clearly this year. And next year,” replied Cameron.

‘The economy has entered deflation,’ announces the BBC news presenter, as if this was a kind of recession. Au contraire. Shopping bills are shrinking, and this is unalloyed good news. The cost of living has been a problem in recent years, but now petrol prices are plunging and the cost of goods (i.e., shopping) is now 2.1 per cent lower than a year ago. The cost of services is up by 2.4 per cent, so technically that means zero inflation - contra the BBC headline. But the overall point holds: stuff is getting cheaper. [datawrapper chart="http://static.spectator.co.uk/pICZY/index.html"] The prices of clothing is down month-on-month for the first time since the CPI inflation index was invented.

“Is it sensible to spend your way out of debt?” ran the opening question in the last night’s Scottish leaders debate – marking it out, straight away, as something very different from politics-as-usual. It was set in Aberdeen, hence the greater concentration of common sense. The six-way debate was feisty and refreshing, and of a calibre higher than the seven-way UK leaders’ debate. Scotland has joined Denmark in producing the best political drama, except this is real. Nicola Sturgeon won last week’s UK debate, I’d give Tuesday’s to Tory leader Ruth Davidson. I’m not sure anyone won, or lost, last night – but unlike last week’s melee, we did learn a few things. And Sturgeon had a harder time of it.

There’s something Ed Miliband isn’t telling us. He’d spend more, he says, and tackle the deficit. But how? Almost every tax rise he has announced is intended to raise cash for still more spending – so how would he cope with the fact that the government still needs to borrow 12p for every £1 that it spends? The obvious answer is: tax rises. But Labour has taken great care to avoid being drawn onto that topic. Or had taken great care, until Chris Leslie’s outing on the TV shows today. Leslie, deputy to Ed Balls, is one of the better guys in politics, straight-talking and pretty honest. And today, he told it straight: Labour would indeed need to raise taxes.

BBC Scotland's James Cook caught up with Nicola Sturgeon today and asked her about the Telegraph's leaked memo. But he also told her that the story chimes with what he has been told by senior SNP figures - that it suits their wider purpose to have a Tory Prime Minister because it rallies support for independence. His asking this question infuriated the CyberNats who rounded on him. Rarely for a BBC journalist, he commented on it: What an extraordinary level of vicious abuse I have received today for simply reporting the news. Is this the country we want folks? Is it? — James Cook (@BBCJamesCook) April 4, 2015 He raises a good point.

So who does Nicola Sturgeon really want as Prime Minister? Her official line is that she’d put in anyone but the wicked Tories – indeed, Alex Salmond told me last week that “the SNP approach to a Cameron minority government will be to bring it down”. But that’s not what Strugeon has been saying in private. The Daily Telegraph has just released a leaked diplomatic memo revealing that Ms Sturgeon has confessed to the French ambassador that she would prefer that David Cameron "remains"  Prime Minister - and that she thinks Ed Miliband is too incompetent. The leaked memo - a UK government memo - goes as follows:- "Just had a telephone conversation with Pierre-Alain Coffinier, the French CG [consul-general].

The Sun's front page today has a picture of Ed Miliband saying: “Oops, I just lost my election”. That’s an exaggeration: I’d say the election is still 50/50, pretty much where it was last week. And realistically, that’s the best David Cameron could have hoped for. Miliband emerged best from the Paxman interviews, and had he triumphed last night he would have gathered momentum that could well have carried him over the line on 7 May. It was easier for Miliband to 'win - all he had to do to exceed expectations was turn up without the help of a life support machine. Last time, there was a sizeable gap between the caricature of Ed Miliband and the man at his best. But in his debate, the gap wasn't so big.