Archive: 3 May – 9 May 2010
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Friday 7 May 2010
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George Osborne at the Conservative headquarters in central London. Photograph: Linda Nylind
As the director of the Tories' general election campaign, George Osborne is facing a bumpy ride. Conservatives on the right and left of the party are united in thinking that Osborne must share much of the blame for a disappointing result.
Tories on the right are annoyed because they believe the campaign should have focused more on traditional Tory issues such as immigration. They say this was a major concern on the doorstep but was barely mentioned until David Cameron tore into Nick Clegg's plan to offer "earned citizenship" to long term illegal immigrants in the final television debate. The right say Cameron is too sensitive about undermining the party's moderate image.
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A council worker sweeps the road in front of No 10 Downing Street the morning after the election Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images
It is not often that Gordon Brown is accused of being asleep on the job, but he was sleeping this morning as the final results were coming in
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Gordon Brown arrives back at 10 Downing Street as the country looked set for a hung parliament. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Can Labour cobble together enough support to form a government?
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The Queen will attend the State Opening Of Parliament on 25 May. But who will be prime minister? Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images
As the night wore on, it became curiouser and curiouser.
A Tory asteroid hit Montgomeryshire and the Liberal Democrat Lembit Opik was taken out by the Tories on a swing of 13.2%. Roll on David Cameron you're in Downing Street for an age because Opik's seat is 210th on your target list.
But what's this? It's just gone 5.00am, it's lighting up and a grinning Gisela Stuart is on television. Yes, the woman whose victory in the once rock solid Tory seat of Birmingham Edgbaston heralded Tony Blair's victory in 1997 has held on. Stuart won with a majority of 1,274.
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Wednesday 5 May 2010
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The "dreary steeples" of Fermanagh and Tyrone, mocked by Winston Churchill (above), could take centre stage in a hung parliament. Photograph: Rex Features
Are the "dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone" about to take centre stage in British politics?
Winston Churchill famously dreamt up this disparaging remark to say that little had changed in Northern Ireland after Europe had been shaken to its core by the first world war.
But the rest of the United Kingdom may be looking to those steeples in the coming days if voters elect the first hung parliament since February 1974. Continue reading...
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George Osborne, the man most likely to be chancellor in the next 48 hours, yesterday said the Treasury forecasts are "largely a work of a fiction".
He said this in the Financial Times in order to justify his plans for an independent Office of Budget Responsibility.
Call me naive, but that sounds like you are impugning the integrity of a lot of civil servants. This is not what I would do if I was just about to go and work with some of Britain's best brains – possibly not "we are all in this together" politics.
I assume he is saying civil servants have been bullied by Labour politicians to lie, or else conventions are being used to force civil servants into being less than honest over issues such as PFI liabilities. Either way, it is quite a thing to say that the growth forecasts are a work of fiction, as Osborne says.
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Monday 3 May 2010
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The battle of the party election broadcasts continues. Ross Kemp, who played Grant Mitchell in EastEnders, stars in Labour's final broadcast, which will be aired tonight.
Entitled Sixty Seconds, the video features Kemp pleading with people to spend 60 seconds to protect their jobs and the economy by voting Labour:
This election isn't a beauty contest. This is about what's best for you, your family and your country – and who you really trust to look after them for the next five years. You probably have lots of important things to do on Thursday – a full day's work, picking up the kids, paying the bills.
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Now it is the Tories' turn to release a video following Labour's witty personalised video this morning.
The Tories' offering steers clear of humour. Instead it is a dark depiction of Gordon Brown standing trial. As Brown grips the railing in the dock, a grim looking prosecutor reads out the charge sheet:
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If you hadn't quite worked out what the Tories see as their greatest strength, take a look at their final party election broadcast that will be aired tonight.
It features David Cameron, followed by David Cameron, followed by a bit more of David Cameron. And then, in case any voter has missed the message, it finishes with David Cameron.
The video is a compilation of Cameron's greatest hits during the last month on the campaign trail. It opens with the speech he delivered on the steps of County Hall on the day Gordon Brown went to the Palace:
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Who said Labour has lost its sense of humour? The party has produced this witty personalised video lampooning David Cameron's "big society" in which people will be invited to join the government of Britain.
Labour believes the big society is a PR makeover of an old Tory idea to shrink the state. It says that Burke's "little platoons" were all very well in the 18th century when high-minded charitable groups helped relieve poverty. But Labour says they are wholly inappropriate in the 21st century when only state action can tackle inequalities.
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Whoops! Amusing to watch the TV types, and the Conservatives, executing a delicate U-turn this morning as they discover their narrative – the undecideds break decisively for the Tories – is failing to come good. The Guardian/ICM poll and the YouGov/Sun tracker both showed yesterday evening that David Cameron did not have the big momentum his acolytes had claimed only 24 hours earlier.
Cameron's weekend interviews setting out the order of legislation now look what we call previous.
Both Sunday night polls, if the swing is reproduced nationally, show Labour coming out as the largest party in terms of seats, thus releasing Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg from his commitment to give the Tories the first chance to form a government.
It may be an utterly daft electoral system, but it is the one the Tories enthusiastically voted for in the Commons only a month and a half ago. The Tories, let it be remembered, did not just vote to keep the current system, they did not even want to give the voters a chance in a referendum to decide if they wanted a change. Continue reading...