Party to also announce plans for ‘victims’ law’ as polls show it pulling ahead of Tories. Join our political team for all the events of the day
· Revealed: Labour’s election campaign war room
· Energy and climate change minister accepts £18,000 from climate sceptic
· Labour and Tory top brass told to stay away by constituencies
· Nigel Farage backs Ukip candidate in sausage roll bribery row
· Labour says SNP plans could cost Scottish pensioners £940 a year
9.07pm BST
As many as 25 million voters are being ignored as a result of the UK’s first past the post system, according to the Electoral Reform Society (ERS), which maintained it can confidently predict the winner in 364 “safe” seats. Katie Ghose, the society’s chief executive, said:
The fact that we can firmly predict the outcome of over half of the seats being contested this May is a sorry indictment of our outdated voting system. The average constituency hasn’t changed hands since the 1960s, and some have been under the same party’s control since the reign of Queen Victoria.
This is a huge disincentive for people to get out there and vote, and for other parties to challenge incumbents.
9.06pm BST
“Why do they always wobble on a Thursday?” is the question posed by the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland in his column, as he discusses the impact of yesterday’s polls on the Conservative campaign. He compares it to a Thursday during the 1987 Tory campaign, when Margaret Thatcher thought she might actually lose the election.
The memoirs of the future may describe *9 April 2015* the same way. Thursday was the worst day so far in what has been a shaky start to the Conservative general election campaign.
The failure of these attacks to penetrate is leading to desperation, especially in those parts of the press that, thanks to Miliband’s stance on media regulation, are determined to keep him out of No 10.
Both the Trident and ex-girlfriends stories smack of Tory operatives frantically stabbing at the old buttons and pulling at the familiar levers, only to find they no longer work.
8.53pm BST
The Guardian has obtained a floorplan of the heart of the Labour Party’s election HQ in Victoria, London. It includes key members of Labour’s 250-strong operation, including Ed Miliband, shadow cabinet members and senior insiders.
8.13pm BST
There are 27 days to go until the general election, and the political parties ramped up their campaigns this week. If you missed out on the key details, we’ve published a list of everything you need to know about this week’s events, from non-doms to Trident.
7.59pm BST
The Election Forecast team are predicting that that Labour will win 26 seats in the North East and the Conservatives will win 3. This implies that the only seats likely to change hands at the upcoming election are those held by the Lib Dems. They write:
The collapse of the Liberal Democrats is likely to be a feature across electoral regions in the UK, but the North East is unlikely to witness significant challenges from the ‘insurgent’ parties that are likely elsewhere.
7.37pm BST
Not much to report from that LBC discussion, except that David Davis said Michael Fallon’s attack on Miliband was a result of the Conservatives trying to draw attention away from the non-dom issue and their defence of the undeserving rich.
7.37pm BST
The Guardian view on the election in Scotland: Scottish nationalism is oozing confidence, Scottish progressive politics is on a roll too, and Labour needs to regain a hearing in Scotland if it is to win in May.
With nearly four weeks still to go, all conclusions are necessarily provisional. There is also a risk of overinterpreting marginal changes in poll numbers. With these provisos, four large things can be tentatively said about the 2015 election campaign so far.
The first is that the Conservative party is making a terrible job of broadening its appeal, due to the negativity of its campaign and lack of sympathy for its leaders. The second is that Labour is putting together some modest but steady momentum based on traditional progressive politics. The third is that the so-called insurgent parties are slipping back in England and Wales. And the fourth is that the continuing strength of the Scottish nationalists overhangs all calculations.
7.29pm BST
Following on from my post about the chief economist of the Toscafund Dr Savvas Savouri predicting that political uncertainty will depress the value of the pound against the dollar (16:13), YouGov’s Joe Twyman has just posted this:
Sterling hits five year low against dollar due to uncertainty over election. What happens if there is run on pound during coalition talks?
7.22pm BST
Meanwhile, in Devon...
Political pig racing in Devon - but not sure the bookies have seen the latest polls #c4news pic.twitter.com/M8JoJaGuub
7.18pm BST
Labour parliamentary candidate in Ceredigion Huw Thomas, who called for his Plaid Cymru rival Mike Parker to resign due to an article he wrote in 2001 comparing English-born residents of rural Wales to Nazis, has himself had to apologise after it emerged he once advocated damaging cars displaying England flags. As the Press Association reports, in a blog post written during the 2006 football World Cup, Thomas described the “sickening” number of St George’s Cross flags seen around Wales. He wrote:
It really shows the level our society has been infiltrated by immigrants who aren’t ready to integrate.
I got the opportunity when I was offered an English flag for half price in WHSmiths Oxford to answer with the sentence ‘since I am neither a simpleton nor a casual racist I must decline your offer’.
These are not my views now and I deeply regret writing this post online. Every candidate at this election will have gone through a political journey. Most will have said or thought things when they were young and at university, college or school that they now regret. This is certainly the case for me.
7.06pm BST
David Axelrod has actually broken his silence today to defend Ed Miliband from “low rent and laughable attacks” by the Conservatives. Axelrod has previously been criticised for his low visibility during the election campaign.
@UKLabour Low rent &laughable personal attacks on @Ed_Miliband reflect panic within the Tory camp, as working people focus on real choice.
7.01pm BST
Former Labour Foreign Secretary *Margaret Beckett*, UKIP Deputy Chairman *Neil Hamilton*, Former Conservative Shadow Home Secretary *David Davis* and former Lib Dem leader *Sir Menzies Campbell* will be appearing on LBC now to review the week’s events. I’ll post any interesting updates from it at the end.
6.56pm BST
We have a new interview with Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood, who reflects on her putdown of Nigel Farage over his HIV health tourism remarks during last week’s leaders debate.
Like many people, you hear things that he and others with those kind of politics come out with, and normally you just have to shout at the television or the radio. So to be in the position to be able to directly challenge that kind of debate, I felt like it was an opportunity I couldn’t miss really, and I’m very glad that I took it and that there was somebody there to call him out on such a prejudicial position.
6.51pm BST
The Conservative party chairman, Grant Shapps, is facing an electoral challenge from a candidate called Michael Green, the name Shapps used as an alter ego to promote get-rich-quick products. As our political correspondent Rowena Mason reports, the man is thought to have changed his name by deed poll to pull off the stunt in the Welwyn Hatfield constituency. He submitted nomination papers at the last minute and is using Laurence Durnan, the editor of the website Political Scrapbook, as his election agent.
The campaign website says: “I‘ll get straight to the point: Tory chairman Grant Shapps has been pretending to be ‘Michael Green’. Well my name really is Michael Green. And I’m pretty pissed off.
“So I’ve decided to embarrass him by standing against him in his own constituency. That’s right: his secret pseudonym will be joining him on the ballot paper.”
6.48pm BST
Homelessness charity Shelter have done some polling with YouGov to find out what the most important factors are for voters when deciding to vote Labour or Tory. Around *20%* of the public are potential “swing voters” who may switch party between now and May (7% say it’s “likely” they will, 13% say it is “possible”).
An analysis of Shelter’s polling results shows that the factors which will most influence who they vote for are whether the party is seen as being: “on the side of people like me” and whether it is “trustworhty” – more so than other regularly cited factors such as: the state of the economy, their ability to make tough decisions and the personalities of the leaders.
6.47pm BST
I’ve just noticed that there is an interview with David Axelrod - Miliband’s American election guru - in the new issue of BA High Life magazine. Axelrod, who helped Obama win two US presidential campaigns, reveals some of his strategy:
If you want one rule: find out what the conventional wisdom is and bet against it; I’ve done pretty well doing that. The conventional wisdom is almost always wrong. During the course of a presidential campaign you’ll hear at least a dozen times that this or that occurrence is a ‘decisive’ or ‘defining’ event, but they almost always aren’t.
6.33pm BST
This election is being run as a pseudo-event, my colleague Marina Hyde writes. I’ve included the beginning of her article below.
Back in the 1960s, the writer Daniel Boorstin defined a pseudo-event as one that would not happen if the cameras were not there. It’s almost as if he could foresee the day when journalists would travel to Somerset to watch George Osborne smile at a vacuum cleaner.
So far, this has been an election staged in out-of-town business parks, cleared factory floors, deserted building sites, and town halls filled with pre-screened party supporters. The list of venues to which the party leaders are bussed or flown satirises itself: a heavily-guarded empty barn, a facility that makes virtual reality suites, a rural hedgehog farm. On Wednesday, the Lib Dems retreated to a woodland adventure centre, prompting a return to that old thought experiment: if Nick Clegg says something political in a forest, does he make a sound?
6.16pm BST
Channel 4 News’ Michael Crick has interviewed David Cameron, during which the PM claims “saying Ed Miliband stabbed his brother in the back is hardly adding to the political lexicon of Britain, it’s a point that’s been made by almost everybody else, including many people in the Labour party.”
My intv with David Cameron - on whether he'd costed his volunteer work scheme, and justifying attacks on Ed Miliband. http://t.co/b9FiFDcSMl
6.04pm BST
Lord Ashcroft has published some word clouds revealing what the biggest concerns about each party are. It would appear voters are worried that Ukip’s policies are too unclear, the Greens lack clarity, the Lib Dems are beholden to the Conservatives, Labour won’t fulfil their promises and the Tories favour the rich.
Biggest concerns about voting UKIP? pic.twitter.com/2lCbKW2Tqf
And biggest concerns about voting Green? pic.twitter.com/vqHbETnpHM
Biggest concerns about voting Lib Dem? pic.twitter.com/SSfdGC0SGo
Biggest concerns about voting Labour? pic.twitter.com/j48oXerAaO
From my 8k-sample national poll - what are the biggest concerns about voting Conservative? pic.twitter.com/SIomY0xwzd
5.58pm BST
Here’s the debate between Patrick McLoughin and Yvette Cooper on the World at One today, when the Conservative transport secretary could not explain how the public sector would be able to afford to let workers take three days of paid leave for volunteering if everyone wanted to take this up.
5.49pm BST
These tweets from PA’s Joe Churcher are handy.
Provisional @pressassoc figures suggest Ukip is the only one of the main parties fielding fewer female candidates than in 2010 - 77 v 83.
Total number of candidates is 3,963 (down from 4,150 in 2010) but a fifth more are women - 1,020 compared to 854, provisional figures show
Ukip contesting 624 seats - 66 more than 2010 and Greens (including Scottish party) 571 - up more than 70% from 335.
BNP has only eight candidates. In 2010 it fielded 338.
5.36pm BST
We’ve published this week’s Guardian politics quiz, if you want to have a go.
5.31pm BST
George Osborne has topped the last Cabinet league table of this Parliament, according to a Conservative Home survey of party members. Osborne’s rating of 87.9 - a rise of 13 points since last month - is his best ever. Cameron has also scored his highest rating of this parliament, with 71.5 points. But what’s interesting is that Boris Johnson trails closely in second place with 85.9 points, even though he’s not an MP.
5.24pm BST
Channel 4 News has released the results of an extra YouGov question about tactical voting in Scotland. Last night’s Times/YouGov poll gave the SNP a 24% lead over Labour. But when Channel 4 News asked an additional question about whether pro-union voters would switch their votes to the party with the best chance of defeating the SNP, it found that the lead falls to 15%. Analysis suggests that this could save up to nine Labour and two Lib Dem seats.
As Channel 4 News political editor Gary Gibbon writes:
The seats Labour would save if tactical voting worked along the lines suggested by our poll would often be ones with relatively marginal Labour leads in 2010. Bizarrely, the way the Labour vote has collapsed in its heartlands, seats with mind-bogglingly large majorities are more vulnerable than marginal ones where middle class supporters of the Tories (and the Lib Dems where they still exist) could save a Labour MP’s bacon.
Under this projection, near wipe-out could become an horrendous rout … I did say it was a qualification, not exactly great news.
5.19pm BST
Nicola Sturgeon’s campaign video from Stirling earlier today:
5.11pm BST
Press Association chief political photographer Stefan Rousseau’s photo of the day is of David Cameron facing a mirror image of himself in a train window as he arrives at Dawlish, Devon.
ELECTION Photo du Jour: David Cameron arrives in Dawlish to see new sea defences. By Stefan Rousseau/PA pic.twitter.com/ai7BFq3T1I
5.05pm BST
The Liberal Democrat care minister, Norman Lamb, has accused mental health campaigners in his North Norfolk constituency of trolling him on Twitter. As my colleague Frances Perraudin reports, Lamb, who promotes himself as a champion for mental health awareness, was responding to tweets from the Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk & Suffolk which called him duplicitous and said it had encountered many people who were adversely affected by cuts to mental health services under the Liberal-Conservative coalition.
@Alex_Boothe @Alex_Boothe I am pursued by vicious, sometimes defamatory and totally cynical trolling by Norfolk/Suffolk Crisis campaigners!
4.59pm BST
Here’s a video of Sky News’ political editor Faisal Islam flicking through the Conservative Party’s notes for speakers (sent to 600 candidates), in which there are 99 mentions of Miliband and only 10 of Cameron.
4.56pm BST
Michael Fabricant, the Conservative MP for Lichfield, Staffordshire, has just revealed that he has been diagnosed with skin cancer.
I was diagnosed with skin cancer this morning (melanoma & basal cell carcinoma) at Queen's Hospital Burton. Probably caught in time. #NHS
.Had various bits removed so walking very oddly! The staff at Queen's are excellent and thoroughly professional. Well done #NHS!
4.52pm BST
More from Cameron’s trip to Devon - the PM made time to visit a cafe in Barnstaple, where he slipped up by confusing the Devonian and Cornish methods for eating a cream tea. Devon tradition is to put cream on the scone before the jam, but the Cornish do it the other way around. You can watch a video of Cameron setting himself up for the fall and quickly realising his mistake after clocking the reaction from the staff here, but I’ve included the quotes below.
When you are in Devon you do the jam and the cream in a different order to Cornwall, is that right?
I’m going to get this wrong, aren’t I?... In Devon it’s... jam first and cream on top?
4.44pm BST
David Cameron has defended the Conservatives’ campaigning tactics after Ed Miliband branded the party’s personal attacks as desperate. Speaking to reporters during a visit to Devon, Cameron said:
I am talking about this every day, which is there is a choice of leaders and there is a choice of teams to run this country. I will be talking about that the day before polling day as I am today.
I don’t really know him, to be honest ... but we have a profound disagreement about how to run the country. In the end, whether you call it personal or not, elections are about choosing the team to take the country forward.
I wouldn’t say that is what has happened at all. I would say you have seen a very strong argument coming from the Conservative Party ... I think that argument is only getting stronger.
4.36pm BST
No matter how many times you read it, nothing tells a story better than a good graphic. This is what Scotland could look like after the election, if current polling is anything to go by.
What the political map of Scotland could look like after #GE2015 pic.twitter.com/dBCFjoIAHA
4.33pm BST
The Greens’ spoof boy band party election broadcast seems to have gone viral. The video, entitled “Change the Tune”, is now the most-watched broadcast of the election campaign so far, with more than 870,000 total views. According to Mark Cridge, an elected member of the Green Party Executive (who are responsible for the day-to-day running of the party), the video has exceeded the party’s expectations.
We’ve put a lot of emphasis on social media and digital campaigning to extend our message to people who haven’t engaged with politics previously and satire and comedy is a fantastic way of doing that. Regardless of what people think of the Green party, everybody likes the film.
Membership has increased four-fold since January 2014 and is approaching 60,000 members in England and Wales, making the Green Party the third biggest party in England and Wales.
4.25pm BST
Channel 4 have launched a new campaign called ‘X’, which aims to encourage more under 25s to register and vote. As part of their launch, they’ve released this video. Most of it made me cringe but some of it made me chuckle too. My favourite part is “FOMO, it sounds like some sort of kinky party.”
4.24pm BST
The Guardian’s Steven Morris has been in Bristol, where the Green Party have been campaigning today. Here are some segments from his report:
A hand-written note on a table at the Green Party’s new high street shop in Bristol tells the story: “We have run out of badges & posters! More coming next week!”
The green surge may be on in Bristol West – spiritual home of the street artist Banksy, real home of eco-warriors, activists and dreamers. “I think this is the sort of place where people want an alternative,” said Jesse Meadows, a 27-year-old actor who was staffing the badge-less table.
“Climate change is the greatest threat we face. Where is that as an issue in this campaign? We are the only party putting that on the agenda. Not in a scare-mongering way but to say, look, you can tackle the climate change crisis and you can create jobs. We have a positive vision of a million green jobs that can take us out of that crisis.”
Addressing the party faithful in the packed shop, however, the biggest round of applause came for her attack on any attempts to privatise the NHS. “Ed Miliband is talking about restrictions on the private sector. We are saying we do not want public money in our NHS services going to private companies. End of.”
Caroline Lucas on why she feels the Greens could win a parliamentary seat in Bristol. http://t.co/BJFZ2iZ2jG
4.13pm BST
A new government will take at least a month to be formed following the general election – and we could have a second election as early as July, according to a new report by Professor Richard Rose of the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde, for the asset management group Toscafund.
Large losses incurred by the Liberal Democrats will reduce their MPs to a point where they cannot assure enough votes to give a Conservative-Lib Dem coalition a plurality in the Commons. Ulster Unionists will also have insufficient MPs to give the Conservatives a secure hold on government. A combination of Labour and SNP MPs would also lack an absolute majority.
If there is a Labour-SNP agreement, a ‘hung parliament’ would have a Sword of Damocles hanging over whoever governs. This is because the SNP will retain the power to vote the government out of office when it thinks it appropriate.
The SNP will also have an incentive to withdraw support from a Labour government before May 2016, when it competes with Labour at the election of a new Scottish Parliament.
This is a good time for anyone planning on a summer holiday in Florida or Dubai to buy dollars, because political uncertainty will drive down the pound’s value. It is also a good time for people with attractive London houses to look for American buyers.
3.59pm BST
The SNP would get more votes than the Lib Dems if they fielded candidates across Britain. As my colleague Alberto Nardelli reports, voters were asked by pollsters at Survation to imagine that the SNP and Plaid Cymru were standing in all constituencies in Great Britain including their own. The results gave the SNP 9% of the vote, which would put them one point above the Lib Dems.
The SNP figures echo a similar survey carried out in recent days by YouGov. It puts Nicola Sturgeon’s party running in all constituencies in Britain on 11% of the vote, ahead of the Lib Dems and just behind Ukip’s 13%.
In YouGov’s figures the Lib Dems would drop to 7%, with the other 15% of Clegg’s 2010 share of votes opting for Sturgeon’s party instead. Support for Labour would fall to below 30%, with one in 10 of the party’s 2010 voters preferring the SNP (slightly more than the hypothetical 7% of Labour to SNP switchers in the Survation figures).
3.50pm BST
There are reports that Scottish Labour MPs were surprised by last night’s YouGov poll which gave the SNP a 24% lead over Labour. It might be worth noting that the poll was taken after the STV debate and before the BBC leaders debate, which is when most people thought Jim Murphy emerged triumphant. Then again, Nicola Sturgeon hardly came out on top after the STV debate, with audience members jeering at her claims about a second independence referendum. So the timing might not have made a difference.
Scottish Labour MPs flabbergasted by the YouGov / Times Scotland poll. They thought things had been going their way in the last two weeks.
3.32pm BST
It’s intriguing how suddenly the “Big Society” theme has made a comeback after disappearing from the debate for more than three years. As the BBC’s Ian Katz points out, here’s Michael Gove on Newsnight only on Tuesday saying you won’t be hearing the phrase in this campaign (10 minutes onwards). I can’t help but feel the resurgence was spontaneous.
Gove on #newsnight Tuesday: you won't hear "Big Society" in this campaign. PM today: "This is Big Society in action" https://t.co/MYBDPhEfTu
3.22pm BST
Hello, I’m taking over from Andrew now. I’m on Twitter @nadiakhomami and I’ll be keeping an eye on your comments below the line, so get in touch if you’ve seen something I haven’t.
I’m all for volunteering, who isn’t? The question is how is it going to work, the Conservatives have provided no details of how it is going to be paid for. We have got lots of over-stretched public services in hospitals and the NHS and so on, how are they going to be able to give people three days off?
It seems to me, it’s got less to do with the actual details of the policy, it’s more about the Conservatives swinging back to the Big Society which I thought had been dead and buried by the Conservatives.
It is fast becoming clear that the Conservatives’ so-called economic credibility is going out the window with their second uncosted announcement of the day.
If they can’t pay for their headline-seeking giveaways, no one will believe they can properly fund vital public services like the NHS or education.
3.08pm BST
On the World at One *Patrick McLoughlin*, the Conservative transport secretary, could not explain how the public sector would be able to afford to let workers take three days of paid leave for volunteering if everyone wanted to take this up. He resorted to the unusual claim: “The money can be afforded and it will be afforded”.
If it’s in the public sector then it is something which we believe can be accepted and adapted and it will be up to individuals whether they want to take it forward or not.
It’s a great thing for people to volunteer in their communities but if half the nurses in the NHS took this up the NHS would need 2,000 more nurses to cover the rotas, the police would need 800 more police to cover the rotas - who’s going to pay for them? Where’s the money going to come from? How much is it going to cost? There’s some estimates saying it’s going to cost £1bn in the public sector, there’s different estimates.
Patrick McLoughlin has just wriggled and writhed, he’s unable to tell us how much would it cost, where’s the NHS going to get the funds to pay for this? I think that’s irresponsible. They should be telling us where the money’s going to come from.
2.20pm BST
Here’s a Guardian picture gallery with the best election pictures from the day.
2.03pm BST
*Damian McBride*, Gordon Brown’s former communications chief and a former Treasury official, has been in touch on Twitter to point out that the Tory claims about fuel duty etc going up under Labour (see 9.06am and 10.25am) are particularly disingenuous.
Not only is @ToryTreasury refusing to rule out increasing those taxes, @AndrewSparrow, the Red Book assumes they will rise each year.
In fact, @AndrewSparrow, the Red Book assumes an extra £4.3bn being raised from fuel, alcohol, tobacco and APD by 2020, due to tax hikes.
1.51pm BST
Full fiscal autonomy will mean a £7.6bn hole in Scotland’s finances. Today I challenge Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP to say how they will fill this £7.6bn gap. Which services will be cut? Which taxes will be raised? And what cuts will it mean for pensioners in Scotland when they are taken out of the UK pensions system? The SNP claim in this campaign to be proposing no reductions in spending, but in fact they are planning dramatic reductions in spending. They must now come clean.
This week we have seen them defending tax avoiders and descending to personal abuse.
Today in further signs of panic, they are announcing billions of pounds of unfunded and unbelievable promises.
They can’t explain where the money comes from. They can’t tell us how they will make these promises happen. They simply won’t be believed.
1.28pm BST
*Jill Seymour*, Ukip’s transport spokeswoman, has dismissed the Conservative promise to freeze regulated rail fares in real terms for five years.
It’s a bit late in the day for the Conservatives to decide it’s time to get a grip on rip-off rail fares, and trying to pose as a friend of the daily commuter. Since the coalition came into power in 2010, the average rail ticket has risen in price by around 20 per cent – way ahead of inflation. At the same time, there has been little evidence of this money being spent on much-needed improvements to the rail infrastructure, or on helping to solve reliability problems.
1.21pm BST
1.17pm BST
Nigel Farage has also has defended one of his parliamentary candidates after claims he tried to bribe voters by providing sausage rolls at an event attended by snooker star Jimmy White, my colleague Rowena Mason reports.
1.15pm BST
Last night *Diane James*, a Ukip MEP, spoke of her admiration for Vladimir Putin. She told LBC:
I admire him from the point of view that he’s standing up for his country. He’s very nationalist. I do admire him. He is a very strong leader.
He is putting Russia first and he has issues with how the EU encouraged a change of government in the Ukraine, which he felt put at risk and put in danger a Russian population in that country.
What she said was that he stands up for his country. He undeniably stands up for his country. But I think we’ve got to a point where he maybe poses us potentially a bit of a threat.
Which takes us back to the defence argument. Why will no one else commit to spending just 2% of our national income on defence? It seems to me that it’s vital that we do so.
1.04pm BST
*Natalie Bennett*, the Green party leader, has said England should boycott the 2022 World Cup in Qatar because of its record on gay and workers’ rights. Asked by Gay Times if England should go to Qatar, Bennett replied
Personally no, that’s my personal opinion. I think there are so many issues around Qatar – gay rights issues, workers’ rights issues.
12.59pm BST
Twitter has unveiled “hashflags” for the parties during the campaign. This means party logos appear if certain hashtags are used.
Today we are launching #GE2015 hashflags! #conservative #labour #libdems #ukip #greens #snp #plaid15 #dup #sdlp #respectparty
12.51pm BST
There are two Cleggs on the ballot paper in Sheffield Hallam. Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader, is facing a challenge from Steven Clegg, who is standing for the English Democrats in the same seat, appearing just below the deputy prime minister on the statement of nominations.
12.44pm BST
12.37pm BST
*Michael Fallon*, the Conservative defence secretary, who seems to be being lined up as CCHQ’s Ed Miliband expert, has put out a statement about the Miliband press conference in Edinburgh.
Ed Miliband’s visit to Scotland shows that the SNP are already pulling Labour’s strings.
Nicola Sturgeon makes a statement, and the Labour leader rushes to Edinburgh to respond. If it’s like this now, imagine what it would be like with the SNP propping up Ed Miliband in Downing Street. Borrowing, taxes, our defence policy – all of it would have to be signed off by the SNP.
12.33pm BST
The Green party in England and Wales now has more than 59,000 members, Natalie Bennett, the Green party leader, has said.
12.32pm BST
The Tories have confirmed that their plans to let people have three days paid leave for volunteering will not allow them to engage in union activities. (See 11.18am.) Trade union activity does not count as charitable activity, they says.
In response, *Frances O’Grady*, the TUC general secretary, issued this statement.
One wonders whether they will go on to ban help at food banks, outlaw giving advice to workers on zero-hours contracts and stop people volunteering for community wind power projects.
If the Conservatives insist people can only help registered charities that means you couldn’t lend a hand at your local school, unless it is a private school with charitable status.
12.20pm BST
Here’s today’s Guardian election three-minute video.
Jonathan Freedland and Alberto Nardell are discussing whether Labour’s poll surge will last.
12.18pm BST
Murphy is summing up now.
He says his plans would ensure Scotland benefited from the mansion tax. This would not happen under the SNP, he says. And in the Scottish parliament the SNP recently voted against Labour’s plan to raise the top rate of tax to 50p, he says. The SNP talk like radicals, but act like conservatives, he says.
12.16pm BST
Q: You said the independence question is settled. Won’t that undermine former Labour supporters who voted yes in the referendum?
Miliband says he is just saying what the SNP themselves said last year. Nicola Sturgeon did not get a great response when she floated the idea of another referendum. That tells you something about the mood of the Scottish people, he says.
12.14pm BST
Q: If you are prime minister, would Britain recognise the Palestinian state?
Miliband says Labour voted for this in the Commons. But Labour said it was a vote for the principle of recognition. A decision about when recognition would actually take place would be made at the time, when it would most help negotiations.
12.13pm BST
Q: [From the Scottish Sun] You have made a devastating case against the SNP. But, by making the case, won’t you ensure it does not happen?
Miliband says the SNP are not abandoning their plan. They are doubling down in it.
12.10pm BST
Q: [From my colleague Severin Carrell] Has Labour done any work on the implications of its plans for Scotland and the Barnett formula?
Balls says Labour plans such as the mansion tax, the bankers’ bonus tax and the bank levy would all benefit Scotland. Labour would get the deficit down, and is aiming for a current budget surplus, not an overall one like the Tories. It is doing a zero-based review.
12.07pm BST
Q: Are the SNP and Ukip equally dangerous to the UK?
Murphy says they are quite different. This election is not about the future of the UK, he says. Scotland voted on that last year.
12.06pm BST
Q: [From Gary Gibbon, the Channel 4 News political editor] We have done a poll showing half of Tory and Lib Dem supporters in Scotland are thinking of voting tactically for Labour to keep out the SNP. Would you encourage that?
Miliband says he would encourage everyone to vote Labour.
12.04pm BST
Q: Can we assume from the fact that you are talking up the SNP that you are scared of Nicola Sturgeon?
Miliband says he is putting forward Labour plans. And he is examing SNP plans. That is legitimate, he says.
12.01pm BST
Q: Aren’t you facing wipeout in Scotland?
Let’s wait and see, says Miliband. He says he has an old-fashioned view; let’s wait until the election.
11.59am BST
Q: [To Miliband] Are you more of a hindrance than a help during the campaign?
Miliband says he does not feel that way.
11.57am BST
*Ed Balls* says pension spending in Scotland would be cut by £1bn under the SNP’s plans for full fiscal autonomy.
That would affect 1m pensioners in Scotland, he says. They would lose £18 a week, or £940 a year.
11.55am BST
Ed Balls says the growth rate in Scotland would have to be 5.3% to make up for the shortfall in its revenue created by its plans for full fiscal autonomy. That would be twice the current growth rate, he says.
11.54am BST
Here’s a quote from Ed Miliband’s opening statement.
Desperation is becoming the hallmark of David Cameron and this Tory campaign.
This week we have seen them defending the non-doms and descending to personal abuse. Today, in further signs of panic, they are announcing billions of pounds of unfunded and unbelievable promises.
11.52am BST
*Ed Balls* is speaking now.
He produces a copy of a document that Labour has produced setting out the implications of the SNP’s plans for full fiscal autonomy.
11.49am BST
*Ed Miliband* is speaking now.
He says time is up for failed Tory austerity.
11.43am BST
Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and *Jim Murphy* are now holding their press conference in Edinburgh.
Jim Murphy to Ed Miliband 'after the week you've had at least this time you've got the sun on your back!' #GE2015 pic.twitter.com/qLt4OVeOiZ
11.37am BST
Ed Miliband will shortly be giving a speech in Edinburgh attacking the SNP’s plans for Scotland to have full fiscal autonomy. As Severin Carrell reports in his preview story, Miliband will argue this would cost Scotland £7.6bn.
In a pre-emptive strike this morning, *Nicola Sturgeon*, the SNP leader, accused Labour of “desperation”.
This is desperation on the part of the Labour party. Instead of putting forward a positive case of their own, they are resorting to the same fears and smears that they resorted to during the referendum. The truth is the only cuts on the horizon for Scotland are the ones that the Tories are proposing and Labour are backing.
Let us lift austerity and have spending increases in the next parliament that are fiscally responsible but allow us to spend more money on our vital public services like the health service.
I am proposing an increase in spending in the health service across the UK that would see by the end of this decade an additional £2bn being spent on the NHS in Scotland. That’s the choice we have at this election – continued austerity being proposed by the Tories and Labour, or an alternative to austerity, which is what the SNP is proposing, and we need a strong Scottish voice in Westminster that can force that alternative to austerity.
11.32am BST
On Radio 5 Live* Jeremy Hunt* also said he would vote to leave the EU if the Conservatives did not secure significant reforms. He said:
If we don’t get the deal that we need, yes I would [vote to leave]. But I think we can get the deal we need, because I have confidence in David Cameron. He has stood up to European leaders before.
11.29am BST
On Radio 5 Live *Jeremy Hunt*, the Conservative health secretary, said the NHS should not be used as a political football.
I stand with the vast majority of doctors and nurses who don’t think the NHS should be used as a political football. I know there are lots of doctors and nurses who are sick and tired of the NHS being used.
Tories canvassing for a 'support the NHS' letter from doctors - the games continue! pic.twitter.com/Qk7stSJ41T
11.18am BST
*Frances O’Grady*, the TUC general secretary, claims the Tory volunteering plan will allow union members three days paid leave to get involved in union activities. She has put out this statement.
The TUC has long called for a Community Day bank holiday to encourage volunteering and community engagement. We therefore welcome any move that makes employers recognise the benefits of volunteering and social action.
Trade unions are the UK’s biggest voluntary groups. This new right will give every union member a guaranteed three days for time off to get involved with union activities.
11.08am BST
Populus has got a new poll out this morning.
Latest Populus VI: Lab 33 (-), Con 31 (-), LD 8 (-2), UKIP 16 (+1), Greens 6 (+2), Others 7 (-) Tables here: http://t.co/XaGgAxgjKA
11.02am BST
Earlier I quoted a line from the CBI* *on the Tory volunteering plan that described volunteering as a “win-win”. (See 10.14am.) Those two sentences were all that was running from the CBI on the Press Association. I took them as an endorsement.
I’ve now seen the full statement from *John Cridland*, the CBI’s director general, and it is a bit more equivocal. Here it is.
Businesses encourage their employees to volunteer in the community and should do even more to increase this. Volunteering is a win-win for everyone concerned.
We look forward to seeing detail on how the Conservative party’s proposals will be implemented. The key to success will be providing sufficient flexibility for firms so as to avoid it becoming an administrative or financial burden.
10.37am BST
The* Institute of Directors *has strongly criticised the Conservative plan to let people take three days paid leave for volunteering. (See 7.29am, 10.14am and 10.19am.) This is from its director general, Simon Walker.
Many, many businesses are already highly engaged in their local community and with charitable causes, and the IoD thoroughly supports them. However, the policy announced today does not appear to be have been thought through at all. Passing a law to compel firms to pay their staff to volunteer for charity is hardly in keeping with the spirit of philanthropy.
Businesses should support their staff if they want to volunteer, but the architects of this idea cannot pretend that forcing firms to give an additional three days of paid leave will do anything other than add costs. Time off for charity work and volunteering is a matter for managers and employees to discuss between themselves, not a target for heavy-handed government intervention.
10.25am BST
I’ve asked the Tories if they will rule out putting up fuel duty, air passenger duty, alcohol duty or tobacco duty. (See 9.06am.) The answer seems to be no, although they do point out they got rid of the fuel duty escalator.
@AndrewSparrow we're challenging Labour on fuel duty. We abolished Labour's fuel duty escalator. Harman indicating they'll bring it back.
@ToryTreasury Are you ruling out an increase in that, or any of the others?
10.23am BST
*Matthew Hancock*, the Conservative energy and climate change minister, has taken £18,000 from a key backer of the UK’s leading climate sceptic lobby group, my colleague Rowena Mason has revealed. Here’s the start of her story.
According to official records, Hancock has accepted five donations over the years from City currency manager Neil Record, who has given money to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, and is on the board of its campaigning arm.
The most recent donation to the MP was £4,000 given in November last year – after Hancock became a minister with responsibility for energy.
10.19am BST
But Labour has criticised the Conservative volunteering plan. This is from *Lisa Nandy*, the shadow Cabinet Office minister.
This is a re-announcement from David Cameron that has unravelled before it’s even been made. Giving every public servant three extra days off could cost millions of pounds but there’s no sense of how it will be paid for. If just half of public sector workers took this up it would be the time equivalent of around 2,000 nurses, 800 police and almost 3,000 teachers.
10.14am BST
The Conservative plan to give employees the right to three days’ paid leave a year for volunteering has been welcomed in principle by the CBI. This is from *John Cridland*, the CBI director general.
Businesses encourage their employees to volunteer in the community and should do even more to increase this. It is a win-win for everyone concerned.
We expect a bit of give and take on this in the same way we expect people to have a bit of give and take with regard to annual leave.
If yesterday's Michael Fallon interview was a car crash, Eric Pickles just caused a motorway pile-up #r4today
9.54am BST
We’ve updated the Guardian’s seat projection based on the latest polling.
9.33am BST
It turns out I’ve done *Ed Miliband *a disservice. (See 8.28am.) He is a proper cricket fan. I apologise. He talked about this in his recent interview on Absolute Radio, where he took a question from Geoffrey Boycott. Miliband said:
I could go on for hours about Geoffrey Boycott. I saw his 100th 100 in 1977. It was my first cricket match I had been to, and it was England v Australia. And ever since then I was Geoff’s greatest fan.
I think there’s a danger for cricket it ends up only being on Sky, and that fewer people watch it, and the game dwindles a bit.
9.19am BST
Yesterday Ed Miliband was attacked for standing against his brother in a leadership election. Today he’s under attack in the Daily Mail for – well, essentially having girlfriends before he got married.
DAILY MAIL: Cataract Ops: jump NHS queue by paying #tomorrowspaperstoday #BBCPapers pic.twitter.com/n7vlayTaoS
Miliband said that he accepts that reports on his private life “come with the territory” but said it was unfair to drag in his former partners.
Miliband spoke out on ITV’s The Agenda on Thursday night after he was asked about the front pages of the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph which feature pictures of his former partners. The newspapers focused on his love life after an interview with his wife, Justine Thornton, who said she was “furious” to learn Miliband was in a secret relationship with a woman who had invited them to dinner where they met for the first time.
9.12am BST
It turns out *Ed Miliband *did spend some of his youth listening to the cricket after all. (See 8.28am.)
Richie Benaud was one of the great voices of my childhood. A superb all-rounder, captain and commentator.
9.06am BST
In the LBC female leaders’ debate last night *Harriet Harman*, the Labour deputy leader, confirmed the party would not increase national insurance, income tax or VAT. But she specifically refused to make similar assurances about fuel duty, air passenger duty, alcohol duty or tobacco duty. She said:
We’ve said so far in our manifesto on tax: we rule out increasing VAT, the basic or the higher rate of tax, we will put up the top rate of tax, we will not put up the national insurance rates, and for all the other taxes that there are – you know, airport taxes, I can’t remember what they are called, airport passenger duties, or alcohol duties or tobacco or petrol – we will lay that out in the budget.
Now we know. Ed Miliband will put up taxes on hard-working people.
It’s clear he is planning to bring back the last Labour government’s “fuel duty escalator” – the petrol tax that ratcheted up the cost of filling up your tank, all to pay for ever higher spending on welfare and waste.
8.50am BST
Ed Miliband will campaign for Labour in Edinburgh today, confronted by a challenging opinion poll from YouGov for the Times that shows the Scottish National party extending its already significant lead.
8.45am BST
On the Today programme this morning the BBC’s Norman Smith called today “freebie Friday”. That’s because, as well as having the Tories promising to freeze regulated rail fares in real terms and to give workers up to three days paid leave for volunteering (see 7.02am), the Lib Dems are proposing offering loans to help young people renting pay their deposit. They call it “Help to Rent”.
Under the plan, people in work aged 18 to 30 could get a government loan of up to £1,500, or £2,000 in London, to allow them to pay the deposit needed when renting a property.
You’ve got this generation that is sometimes called “the clipped wing generation”, or “the boomerang generation”, of an increasingly large numbers of youngsters – I think the estimates are now about two million people in their 20s and 30s – who simply can’t find the money needed for a deposit to rent a flat or home of their own.
It also has a big knock-on effect on what happens to the property market as far as families are concerned. It means that couples whose children have grown up are not downsizing as readily as they might because they have to keep large properties to maintain space for their kids. So we have a very simple idea which is in effect to extend a system of government loans.
8.31am BST
The Conservative plan’s to freeze regulated rail fares in real terms for the next five years has been grudgingly welcomed by *Manuel Cortes*, head of the TSSA rail union. In a statement Cortes said:
The Tories belated conversion to inflation-only fares increases is welcome. Everyone recognises the sinner that repents, even at one minute to midnight.
But we must remember it was their crazy decision to privatise our railways 20 years ago which has seen fares more than treble on the most popular routes since then – a staggering 246% in peak fares between London and Manchester is but one example.
This latest stunt would still mean annual fare increases that would institutionalise the harsh reality that the British passenger pays the highest fares in Europe to travel on rammed out and unreliable trains.
The only solution is to end the rip off of rail privatisation which would allow us to free up the hundreds of millions of pounds drained off in profits to invest in services and cut fares.
8.28am BST
Good morning. I’m taking over from Esther.
I grew up listening to Richie Benaud’s wonderful cricket commentary. Like all fans of the sport, I will miss him very much.
8.08am BST
Meanwhile, Labour has hit back with this on the Conservative “volunteer leave” announcement:
Tory volunteering proposal isn't only unfunded it's not even new - DC promised it in 2008. Another broken promise pic.twitter.com/iWggpnkDGV
8.03am BST
Those happy to confess to a certain level of election geekery may be interested in this detailed piece on the Conservative Home website looking at the “ground war” in battleground Labour-Tory marginals.
Mark Wallace notes that Lord Ashcroft’s latest batch of polling suggests Conservative activists are being outperformed on the doorsteps by Labour campaigners, which he says makes for “sobering reading”.
The Conservative party faces some challenges on the ground. While the decline in membership has at last been reversed, we are still fewer in number and more advanced in years than Labour.
In some parts of the country, long-serving activists have also decamped to Ukip, further weakening the machine. Many associations have struggled to replace long-serving stalwarts as they age, die or leave to follow Nigel Farage.
7.45am BST
The Telegraph is reporting this morning that the Conservative manifesto, which will be published next week, will not include a commitment to meeting Nato’s target of spending 2% of national income on defence.
The paper says the decision has angered military chiefs, and quotes General Sir Richard Shirreff, who until last year was Nato’s deputy commander in Europe, saying:
We will lack credibility in the eyes of our fellow members [of Nato] having trumpeted the importance of 2% in last year’s Wales summit.
If we have puffed ourselves up about how clever we are for spending 2%, then not doing that undermines our credibility.
7.29am BST
The communities secretary, *Eric Pickles,* has just appeared on the Today programme talking about the party’s plan to allow 15 million people to take up to three days “volunteering leave” a year.
He described it as a “very sensible, modest proposal … it seems to me we’re having to scrape the barrel to find objections”.
Of course nurses do go on holiday, they are entitled to annual leave.
In any large organisation, you are going to want to train and enhance staff. This is going to enhance productivity, enhance the process.
We’re talking about three days and it would be worked out to ensure it didn’t cause inconvenience to the health service.
We expect there to be give and take on this in the same way as we expect there to be give and take on annual leave.
7.02am BST
Good morning and welcome to the Guardian’s live election blog, with 27 days to go until polling day.
Their strategy – and it is a clear part of their strategy, despite Labour attempts to claim this is the move of a ‘rattled’ campaign – is simple. Tory focus groups show them Miliband is effectively unelectable.
SNP extends its lead in latest Scotland in YouGov/Times poll: SNP 49 +3 Lab 25 -4 Con 18 +2 LD 4 +1 On uniform swing SNP = 50+ seats
Refusing to get excited about Labour's 3 poll leads. Painful memories of April 1st 1992 when we were sure we were on our way to victory.
It's that time of the evening where everyone gets excited about the poll that backs up the thing they want to say and ignores the rest
The prime minister will say today that it should no longer be “taken for granted that people who get up early and come home late, spend a large amount of the money they earn travelling to and from work”. He will seek to draw a line between the Tories and Labour, saying that the previous administration levied above-inflation fare rises “year after year”...
Mr Cameron said: “The cost of commuting is one of the biggest household bills that hardworking families face and it is something we are determined to bear down on.”
Tories determined to make campaign about Ed M. Big mistake. Makes them look defensive, negative and angry.
Genuine question: What would you do to rejig the Tory campaign? I'm preparing a (short term political) plan.
No, seriously. Tampons are a political issue. Specifically the fact that VAT is levied on them. We’ve calculated that women spend around £114 on tampons each year, and there would be a big saving if they weren’t taxed.
I can’t tell you when there will be another independence referendum. I think there will be one and I think there will be a “yes” vote.
I’m not sure how I managed to miss the fact that leadership of the Labour party is a hereditary position. Apparently, Labour hasn’t even got round to abolishing the rule of primogeniture.
Nine times out of 10, it is perceived economic competence that determines the outcome of British elections; the party that leads the polls on economic management ends up winning. Yet this time, the rule doesn’t seem to be holding.
The two main parties are neck and neck in the polls, a position which has not shifted significantly for a long time now. Britain’s economic recovery, with its accompanying jobs “miracle”, has had virtually no effect.
We're 28 days out from #GE2015. At this point in #GE2010, the post-debate LibDem surge/Cleggmania was still more than a week away.
Continue reading...
Reported by guardian.co.uk 1 hour ago.