Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator and author of Why We Get the Wrong Politicians. She also presents Radio 4’s Week in Westminster.
Is David Cameron talking up the SNP as a naughty campaign tactic to hurt Labour? This morning the Prime Minister denied that charge in his Today programme interview, saying: ‘I don’t accept that; I’m fighting the nationalists in Scotland. Indeed, I’ll be there later today standing up for Conservative candidates who want a strong United
As well as trying to prepare voters for what may happen after 8 May, David Cameron needs to make sure he has his party on board for the ride after the election, too. The 1922 Committee will need to approve a second coalition, but the hope in the Cameron camp is that this will be
Well, Labour has started on its own mission of framing the post-election legitimacy debate. Responding to the Tory operation to prepare the public for what might happen from 8 May onwards, Ed Miliband’s party is now claiming that David Cameron is determined to stay in Downing Street even if his coalition loses its majority. A
Ed Miliband spent a lot of his Today programme interview refusing to answer questions about how a minority Labour government would work because he is focusing both on the ‘big issues’ and on ‘winning a majority’. Both are good things to focus on when the polling stations haven’t yet opened, though of course how a
One of Britain’s great traditions is the open garden afternoon: an opportunity for folk revelling in being both middle-aged and nosy (like me) to wander around other people’s plots and peer at what they’ve planted while scoffing large slices of cake. The National Gardens Scheme and Open Squares are two of the most popular, and
Nicky Morgan’s record as Education Secretary is coming under fierce attack in the Loughborough market place where she’s campaigning. A furious man is telling activists that he will never vote for the Tory candidate because of ‘what she’s done’. The campaigners brace themselves for a diatribe about Tory education policies. Instead, it turns out that
Tory MPs will plot their party’s response to the election result and any likely coalition partnerships in a meeting next Friday, 8 May at 4pm, Coffee House has learned. The powerful executive of the 1922 Committee will meet that afternoon in order to prepare their demands for the Prime Minister and discuss any initial outlines
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
Douglas Carswell seems rather excited about the Spectator following him around as he campaigns in Clacton, but it’s not clear whether that’s just because our interview starts in McDonald’s. Tucking into a quarter pounder with cheese, the Ukip candidate seems on good form, expounding at length on the failure of mainstream politicians to connect with
If some polls are to be believed, Labour won’t exist in Scotland after next week. All suggest it will be a considerably pruned branch of the party. Whatever happens, the campaign Scottish Labour has had to fight since the referendum shows a party coming to terms with the shocking realisation that safe seats cannot stay
A common technique in gothic horror novels is to avoid describing whatever monster the author is trying to scare readers with. The imagination is even more powerful than the pen, and silence on the details of the beast means those reading will concoct their own personal nightmare as they read on. This was always the
Ed Miliband has clearly decided that a lectern is the way to help voters imagine him as a Prime Minister, and the Tories have clearly decided that it’s something worth mocking. Here, in case you ever need it, is a graph setting out how often Miliband has used a lectern, and how often David Cameron
Things have come to a pretty pass when the two party spokespeople who experience the worst drubbing in a debate are the current Defence Secretary and the Green party representative. In today’s Daily Politics defence debate Rebecca Johnson ended up, after some considerable flapping and obfuscation, disowning a section of the Green party’s website which
One constituency where the Tory attacks about a possible deal between Labour and the SNP work very well is Barrow and Furness, where Labour’s John Woodcock is standing for re-election. The seat includes shipyards where the new Trident submarines would be built, and so any suggestion that Labour might scale back its commitment to Trident
Are today’s GDP figures really a blow to George Osborne as some of his critics are claiming? The Office for National Statistics said today that GDP grew by just 0.3 per cent in the first quarter of this year, which is half what it was in the last three months of 2014. [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/oNkRJ/index.html”] What’s
David Cameron continues his anti-SNP campaign today, launching what the Times calls his ‘strongest attack so far’ on a Labour-SNP government. The Prime Minister tells the paper that there are ‘ten days to save the United Kingdom’, which is an echo of Tony Blair’s ‘24 hours to save the NHS’ and William Hague’s less successful
David Cameron is known as the ‘essay crisis’ Prime Minister, and today he did little to dispel that impression. With just 10 days to go until the election, Cameron produced a passionate, excited speech in which he insisted that he was ‘pumped’ about the election and about fighting Labour. Afterwards, when asked what he’d had
There’s nothing wrong with negative campaigning in an election. If you think your opponents would damage the country, then you should point it out. What’s wrong with negative campaigning is when it’s the only sort of campaigning you’re doing, or when the balance appears to be tipping in its favour in terms of your key
A friend of mine was notorious at university for photoshopping every single photo of her that went onto Facebook. Every snap in a nightclub or lounging on the beach went through the same changes in RGB levels so that her tan appeared better. And she did look good, at first glance. To those who knew
For someone who might be about to lose her seat, Jo Swinson seems very perky as she walks the streets of Bishopbriggs in her constituency. The Lib Dem, who is standing for re-election in East Dunbartonshire in Scotland, is busy trying to persuade people who have received their postal votes this week to back her.