Isabel Hardman

The latest issue of Charlie Hebdo goes on sale tomorrow, with around 1,000 copies expected to be available in the UK. Some people have decided that buying it shows ils sont Charlie, but both David Cameron and Nick Clegg don’t appear to be joining the rush for copies. The Deputy Prime Minister told the Today programme that ‘I’m not sure I’m going to buy it’, while the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said ‘I’m not sure he necessarily will, but I’m sure that he will see the image that I think people are understandably asking me about today. Whether he will buy a copy, I confess I’m not sure’.

Why have the Conservatives left out immigration and the NHS - two of the three issues that voters consistently cite as the most important in forming their decision about who to back in the General Election - out of their list of six priorities? Among the deficit, jobs, taxes, education, housing and retirement there is no room for the health service, immigration or Europe: which also tend to be the things David Cameron and Ed Miliband fight most vehemently over at Prime Minister’s Questions. Labour is very pleased about this, and is pretending to be very cross that the Prime Minister is ignoring the NHS.

Unsurprisingly, David Cameron has this afternoon said he won’t take part in the TV election debates if the Greens are no included in one of the line-ups. Currently the proposal is for Cameron vs Miliband, then Cameron vs Miliband vs Clegg, then Cameron vs Miliband vs Clegg vs Farage. The Greens have been excluded, as have the SNP and Plaid Cymru. This is the exchange between the Prime Minister and ITN’s Tom Bradby: Me; 'Time is running out; are you saying you are not going to go in as it stands unless at least the Greens are in?' Him; 'Correct.' — tom bradby (@tombradby) January 8, 2015 Why is Cameron so anxious about the Greens all of a sudden?

Andy Burnham has put in a request for an urgent question on the A&E crisis, I have learned. The question, which the Speaker has yet to decide whether or not to grant, is as follows: URGENT QUESTION Rt Hon Andy Burnham MP To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the major incidents that have been declared at a number of hospitals and on A&E performance in England. This might seem rather unsurprising at first glance, and it would be on any other day of the week. Today Ed Miliband will face David Cameron at PMQs and as I blogged earlier, it would be extremely odd if he didn’t use his questions to the Prime Minister to ask about the NHS.

Ed Miliband’s office has complained that no-one told them about Angela Merkel’s visit to London, which takes place tomorrow. They are apparently very irritated about no-one telling them, even though the Foreign Office isn’t required to flag up visits like this anyway. But worse than that, they were given warning: in the newspapers. Here are the first few paragraphs of a story published by the Times on 27 December, entitled ‘Merkel puts culture and G7 on agenda for visit’: ‘Angela Merkel will make Britain her first overseas visit of the year in a sign of the importance that she attaches to her relationship with David Cameron.

Ed Miliband today promised that Labour will offer ‘hope, not falsehood’ in its General Election campaign. It’s a bold pledge given the party is making so much of the claim that the Tories want to reduce public spending to levels not seen since the 1930s - a claim that has foundations made of something oddly similar to sand. Similarly the Tories have today produced an interesting dossier that Miliband’s party has interestingly called ‘dodgy’ because it contains a number of ‘assumptions’. As James explains, that’s part of the plan, as Labour now has to say which cuts it wouldn’t reverse and which it would.

If you want a glimpse of the sort of election campaign we’re facing for the next few months, these posters from Labour and the Conservatives tell you everything you need to know. [caption id="attachment_8954872" align="alignnone" width="621"] The poster and the porkie[/caption] The Tories want to encourage voters to stay on the (apparently German rather than British and apparently heading nowhere) road to recovery, even if that involves leaping around between different measures of the deficit in order to give the impression of momentum. They want to talk about the economy because that’s their strongest issue. Similarly Labour is staying where it is most comfortable, threatening the end of the NHS as we know it in posters released this weekend.

Politicians really are quite unfortunate people, aren’t they? Always being misinterpreted. It’s almost as though they speak another language (some Commons debates suggest they do, anyway) and journalists wilfully translate them wrongly. Today Tony Blair has claimed that his remarks about a lefty Labour party losing to a right-wing party have been ‘misinterpreted’. This is what he told the Economist: - There could be an election ‘in which a traditional left-wing party competes with a traditional right-wing party, with the traditional result’ and when asked if that means a Tory win, ‘Yes, that is what happens’. - ‘I am convinced the Labour Party succeeds best when it is in the centre ground.

Why on earth are the Tories using the quiet news period between Christmas and New Year to talk about fox hunting? It’s a question many Conservative MPs are asking, worrying that it will only make their party look more posh and out-of-touch to most voters. Other than that Boxing Day is good day to place a story about hunting (check out Camilla’s festive mount in the Telegraph today), placing the story at all seems like an odd idea. Even Labour are quite chuffed with the story, as it’s not exactly an offensive against the Opposition. They haven’t just used it to bash the Conservatives, but also to needle Ukip on whether the party supports a ban or not. But why have the Conservatives given the Opposition a bit of a gift?