Daily Politics debate on economy
David Cameron says Tory party chairman ‘does a great job’
Labour would invest £150m in cancer diagnostic equipment
Lib Dems would halt pay cuts for public sector, Nick Clegg announces
Cameron says Salmond’s budget joke will ‘shock’ voters
Lunchtime summary
2.58pm BST
Andrew Neil puts it to David Gauke that a pledge by David Cameron to create two million jobs has been plucked out if thin air.
Gauke dodges the question. Businesses and employers create jobs. Governments can put in place conditions to create jobs. Tax policies, bring regulations down.
2.57pm BST
A Ukip candidate has been threatened with beheading, the Press Association reports.
A Ukip candidate has said he fears for his safety after being threatened with beheading in a phone call from someone claiming to be a potential constituent.
Northumbria Police have confirmed they are investigating allegations made by David Robinson-Young, who said he received the call from a man calling himself Mr Khan yesterday.
2.54pm BST
Nick Clegg has been visiting an Airbus factory near the Liberal Democrat seat of Bristol West, currently held by communities minister Stephen Williams.
“I think my own constituents would prefer a progressive coalition,” said Williams. “Probably in their hearts they would like to see a Liberal Democrat-Labour coalition.”
2.48pm BST
Alex Salmond has responded to David Cameron. He says Cameron should get a sense of humour.
Instead of a few carefully stage managed appearances, David Cameron should try holding a few public meetings and meeting real people - and develop a sense of humour. The point made in a light hearted way was that Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy had been slapped. down by his party bosses at Westminster and told that he would have no role in Labour budget. David Cameron is clearly a prime minister with both a people by-pass and a sense of humour by-pass.
2.37pm BST
Labour’s Chris Leslie is asked on Daily Politics if it is sensible to borrow more while debt is running at £1.5 trillion.
Leslie says there is a distinction between day to day spending and productive public investment. Capital is important, he says. Labour still hopes to move to budget surplus with debt falling as percentage of GDP.
2.29pm BST
Andrew Neil despairs at David Gauke for dodging a question on where the Tories will fund spending pledges such as £8bn for the NHS. “It’s like groundhog day,” Neil says.
NHS is a priority for us, Gauke says. We’re committed to £8bn. He keeps repeating that the coalition found £7.3bn in last term but won’t explain how £8bn will be found in next term.
2.25pm BST
Candidates on Daily Politics are asked about a comment made by former leader Alex Salmond. The former SNP leader is quoted as saying the Scottish labour leader will not be writing the Labour budget because “I’m writing the labour budget.”
SNP’s Stewart Hosie says he was having a bit of fun. Our plan sees the deficit fall every year in this parliament. Debt falls as share of GDP in each year. It’s a deal to be struck which seems fair.
2.13pm BST
Daily Politics presenter Andrew Neil asks Ukip’s Patrick O’Flynn if it can be presumed Ukip will not tax late-night adult TV channels after Daily Express owner Richard Desmond, who also owns Television X, Red Hot TV, donated £1m to the party.
2.11pm BST
Ed Miliband says David Cameron is trying to "stir up English hatred of the Scots". @theJeremyVine
Ed Miliband told Justine re #milifandom: "She thought it must be a case of mistaken identity.."
2.03pm BST
Hi Jamie Grierson here. I’ll be keeping an eye and ear on the Daily Politics election debate, this time its on the economy. Tory David Gauke, Labour’s Chris Leslie, Liberal Democrat Dick Newby, Ukip’s Patrick O’Flynn and Scottish National Party’s Stewart Hosie are all appearing. I won’t post a minute by minute account, rather flag up the most interesting bits.
1.45pm BST
According to the Press Association analysis, SNP candidates are most likely to be on Twitter, and Ukip candidates least likely.
Of the seven main parties, the SNP has managed to get all of its parliamentary candidates on Twitter - while Ukip has only managed to do so with 52% of its prospective MPs.
The Scottish nationalists and Ukip top-and-tailed a Press Association table on Twitter participation. Labour were in second place with 92% of candidates on the micro-blogging site, while you can expect to see tweets from 84% of the Tories’ hopefuls.
1.35pm BST
David Cameron has tweeted a video of Alex Salmond joking about writing the next Labour government’s budget.
Unsurprisingly, Cameron doesn’t find it funny.
This footage will shock you: Alex Salmond laughs & boasts he’ll write Labour’s budget. Vote Conservative to stop it. https://t.co/A6DGJtM8OM
1.25pm BST
The pink bus was sadly absent today as Yvette Cooper came north of the border to help launch the Scottish Labour women’s manifesto with deputy leader Kezia Dugdale MSP, co-founder of the Women 50/50 representation campaign, and shadow Scottish secretary Margaret Curran, who is fighting for her political life in the key SNP /Labour battleground of Glasgow East.
After the requisite photocall with toddlers at a nursery in Ballieston, Cooper warned voters not to “swallow” the SNP’s prospectus.
1.22pm BST
Here’s the YouTube video of David Cameron’s Alex Salmond joke. (See 11.57am.)
1.07pm BST
David Cameron and Boris Johnson are doing a campaign visit together in Surbiton. They have been visiting a nursery.
Here are some of the highlights from Twitter.
Boris and Cameron arrive at a campaign visit. The media are kept behind a rope. Boris and Cameron say nothing pic.twitter.com/QbbMfW4PEi
PM and Boris help 3yr olds with a jigsaw. PM:"I have a cunning plan". Boris: "He has a long-term cunning plan". pic.twitter.com/p6myNuqU1X
Boris, finally completing child's puzzle: "It's a bit like the campaign." PM: "It comes together in the end" pic.twitter.com/0RiyuTdvIv
Boris Johnson and Cameron enjoyed their finger painting in Tory blue with nursery children. "It's the woad to recovery" puns Boris #GE2015
DC conceded that Boris has bigger hands. We all know what they say about men with big hands. Though perhaps a fact check for another time.
Five minutes after Cameron and Boris enter nursery a child is brought out screaming. Correlated? Causal?
12.51pm BST
Julian Huppert, the incumbent Lib Dem candidate for Cambridge, is distributing election leaflets that describe him as an “independent”, rather than making explicit his party affiliation. The leaflet does not include the Lib Dem logo and has only one mention of the party when it boasts that “Julian and the Lib Dems” will give an extra £8bn to the NHS.
The leaflet claims that Huppert “has always and will always put Cambridge before party”.
No mention he's a Lib Dem, no mention of Clegg. This is one of Duncan Hames's campaign leaflets. pic.twitter.com/ntrbVSaqoU
12.50pm BST
Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, has been campaigning in Edinburgh this morning.
Overheard an SNP activist saying @NicolaSturgeon is to the Scottish people what Princess Di was to the English.
12.48pm BST
Tim Collins, the former Tory MP who was a party press officer during the 1992 election campaign, said this morning that David Cameron should learn from John Major’s decision to take to his soap box during that campaign.
An awful lot of money had been invested in advance planning in 1992 of what we called ‘Ask John Major’ events. But in the end, John Major thought he wasn’t going to get through to the actual public, decided he wanted to have a soap box, actually braved howling mobs, got eggs and worse thrown at him, had suits destroyed, blood was drawn and all the rest of it.
But people thought here’s a guy who is actually prepared to fight for my vote and I think that is what’s lacking now.
12.45pm BST
12.43pm BST
In his LBC phone-in, while I was listening to David Cameron, Boris Johnson suggested that British special forces should be sent to Libya to stop people traffickers sending migrants across the Mediterranean. Nick Ferrari, the presenter, pushed him into saying this. The Press Association has the details.
Asked again about the use of military personnel, Johnson said: “I think you need to choke off the problem at source - you need to stop these people being put into boats.”
Told the only way to do this was by putting troops into Libya, Johnson said: “Isn’t the tradition you don’t discuss the use of special forces but you need to do something?”
12.34pm BST
In his speech earlier David Cameron said poverty increased under Labour. (See 11.35am.)
If our summary of Labour’s distributional objectives is accurate, then outcomes reflected those objectives quite closely. Turning first to poverty, both absolute and relative measures of income poverty fell markedly among children and pensioners - although the scale of the changes did not always match the considerable ambition, as set out explicitly in the case of the government’s child poverty targets.
By contrast, the incomes of poorer working-age adults without dependent children - the major demographic group not emphasised by Labour as a priority - changed very little over the period. As a result they fell behind the rest of the population and relative poverty levels rose. Since childless working-age people started the period with low levels of poverty compared with other demographic groups, one consequence of these trends was that the risks of poverty across the major demographic groups converged under Labour. This is illustrated in the Figure below.
12.31pm BST
Brian Hoskins, the director of the Grantham institute for climate change at Imperial College London, has said that given the importance of the Paris climate summit this year, the attention given to climate change in the general election campaign was “pathetic” and “extremely disappointing”.
“The contrast between the importance of this year and our election is just stark,” he said. “It seems we go towards the lowest common denominator in such a discussion of this, instead of stepping back and saying what do we want, what is our vision for the country, what is our vision for the world, we’re saying, are we going to get a pack of butter for 20p rather than 30p? It’s a shopping list rather than a vision.”
12.14pm BST
Here’s David Cameron’s Alex Salmond joke. (See 11.57am.)
Anyone else hear the PMs little joke at Alex Salmond?... #ThisMorning #DavidCameron pic.twitter.com/BfpJxwa97I
12.13pm BST
Here’s today’s Guardian three-minute election video, with Jonathan Freedland and Gaby Hinsliff discussing whether the Tory campaign is wobbling.
The Tories campaign has been lacking in many ways. The ludicrous uncosted spending commitments, the absence of hope or humanity and the shackled, bloodless performance of David Cameron have all been risible.
But on the challenges that will define this contest – the SNP scare, the ground game gamble and the retail offer – Labour’s campaign bosses have repeatedly made the wrong call.
12.08pm BST
Natalie Bennett, the Green party leader, has been speaking to Sheffield Students’ Union this morning. She said today’s Trussell Trust figures showing 1m people used food banks in the last year illustrated why the Greens were demanding sweeping changes to the welfare system, including an end to punitive sanctions.
Here’s an extract from her speech.
Unlike the other parties, who are chained to their slogans about hard working families, we are standing up for a very important principle.
That is: that our benefits system should be there for anyone who needs it, and provide enough for people to get by on without fear of hunger.
11.57am BST
It seems the best bit of the ITV This Morning interview came right at the end. The BBC’s Sean Clare is quoting what Phillip Schofield was saying, introducing the next item, and David Cameron’s response.
"Coming up on @itvthismorning, a man who can steal your watch without you noticing". @David_Cameron: "Who's that, Alec Salmond?"
11.54am BST
Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, was interviewed on Sky News just now. He was asked if he regretted referring to Ukip’s immigration spokesman Steven Woolfe as “half-black”. Farage replied:
Well, he refers to himself as that, so you will really have to ask him that question ... I don’t regret repeating how a candidate describes himself.
11.44am BST
There’s a wee stooshie in Aberdeen about Alex Salmond’s appearance at today’s Oil and Gas UK hustings. Initially it was reported that he has pulled out of the event, with the Lib Dem’s Danny Alexander, but overnight changed his mind. Salmond’s rivals for the Aberdeenshire seat of Gordon have accused him of spending more time on his book tour than on the campaign trail.
#salmond now changed mind and IS appearing at Aberdeen oil and gas hustings after Daily Mail's @AlanRoden revealed that he had pulled out.
11.35am BST
Here are some extracts from David Cameron’s childcare speech this morning.
That is the choice at this election.
On one side, the so-called Labour party.
We introduced 15 hours of free childcare a week for 3 and 4 year olds and disadvantaged 2 year olds.
In the next parliament we will double that for 3 and 4 year olds.
11.25am BST
Here is a Guardian video of David Cameron responding to the Grant Shapps story.
11.23am BST
Q: People think the Conservatives are heartless. Do you guys lack heart?
Cameron says he does not accept that. He has taken the poorest people out of income tax. He has created 2m new jobs. It makes him mad to hear Labour talk about this.
11.19am BST
Q: Why do 1m people need food banks?
Cameron says he is trying to address this. The key thing is to improve the economy, so more people get jobs.
11.11am BST
Following on from Andrew’s post about the Ukip vote being squeezed (see 10.39am), our data editor Alberto Nardelli has written this detailed analysis of how the Tories are clawing back supporters from Ukip.
The Tories’ is a 36.5% strategy. It isn’t aimed at winning over new friends, but at winning back old ones. This tactic relies on targeting Ukip voters without scaring those already convinced to back the party …
The idea that many Ukip voters are working class and that they therefore pose a threat to Labour’s support in the election has gained considerable currency in recent years. But we find this is wrong; the working class basis of Ukip has been strongly overstated.
The party’s strongest supporters are often the self-employed and business owners. Even within the working class, Ukippers tend to be low level supervisors, and not the disadvantaged semi and unskilled workers often thought to provide the core of the party’s support.”
11.10am BST
David Cameron is being interviewed on ITV’s This Morning.
Cameron says it is his wife’s birthday this weekend.
11.04am BST
Here are some more lines from Nick Clegg’s news conference this morning.
The Conservatives aren’t doing anything to help the parents of two-year-old toddlers with the childcare costs for two-year-olds.
They are doing nothing to help the mum and the dad, the parents who go back to work after nine months or a year and have to wait - under the Conservative scheme - for two whole years before they get any help from a future Conservative government on childcare costs.
I’ve been in government with George Osborne and David Cameron for five years and I’ve seen at every single turn that when the Conservative backbenchers start cutting up rough they buckle,” he said.
John Major is a very decent man, but he knows from his own time in Downing Street what it’s like to be basically held hostage by the right wing of your own party. It’s a very very real prospect and people simply aren’t focusing enough on it.
10.53am BST
Ballot Monkeys, a new election satire, went out for the first time last night. Stuart Heritage was impressed. His Guardian review is here.
10.48am BST
This is an excellent website. Set up by a team from Democratic Audit at the London School of Economics, the Democratic Dashboard allows you to find a wide range of information about your constituency, just by inserting your postcode.
10.39am BST
The polls suggest the Ukip vote is being squeezed. But, on BBC Breakfast this morning, Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, said the party would do better than people expected.
Our vote is firming over the course of the last couple of weeks. In our target seats we are doing well.
The thing about Ukip is that all the so-called experts have underplayed us over the last few years. They have underestimated our potential, they are doing so again, and I think we are going to surprise people.
10.35am BST
Here’s Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative health secretary, responding to the Labour cancer announcement. (See 9am.)
When Labour left office, they left us with the lowest cancer survival rates in Western Europe. We’re treating 700,000 more people a year in this parliament than the last, and now survival rates are at record highs. That’s only possible because we have built a strong economy that has allowed us to invest an additional £750m in cancer services.
10.32am BST
Here’s the Guardian video of Nick Clegg mocking Grant Shapps.
10.15am BST
Cancer Research UK has welcomed Ed Miliband’s pledge of £150m for cancer diagnostic equipment (see 9am), as well as other pledges made on cancer by other political parties.
NHS cancer services are already under strain, and the UK’s ageing population means there will be a growing number of people being diagnosed with cancer for the foreseeable future.
10.06am BST
What do the real voters think? We have 60 in five key seats giving their view throughout the campaign as part of our polling project with BritainThinks. They each have an app and are telling us what they think of stories as they crop up.
Here, five offer their thoughts on media portrayals of the SNP, tactical voting, and which parties are winning the ‘campaign game’.
10.05am BST
At his news conference this morning Nick Clegg mocked Grant Shapps over the Wikipedia allegations, Frances Perraudin reports.
Asked for his views, Clegg said: “Well, Grant Shapps has fervently denied that he had anything to do with it. He himself does not have the time apparently to edit his own Wikipedia entry. I’m prepared to believe him. It could have been someone else. Michael Green for instance.”
10.02am BST
And this is what Boris Johnson said about Grant Shapps on the LBC.
Nick Ferrari ask if, if it was true that Grant Shapps had been editing huge swathes of his Wikipedia page, was he in some form of emotional trouble? Johnson replied:
Grant has said that the whole thing is a load of nonsense.
This is completely trivial by comparison with the kind of stuff that we have been talking about throughout this programme.
I said it was trivial by comparison ...
... with more free childcare, cuts in inheritance tax. Grant has said it is untrue.
Grant has knocked this thing on the head. He has said it is completely untrue and defamatory or whatever. Frankly, at this stage, I’m much more inclined to focus on the big issues at this election, the direction of the UK economy, and whether we can use that economic success to help people with their childcare.
I’m sure my Wikipedia entry has been edited by all sorts of people.
Wikipedia, from what you have just said, is a farrago, a Nigel Farrago, of stuff that is cobbled together by hidden hands. You know not where or who they are. Many of them know absolutely nothing about what they are talking about plainly. The golden rule is don’t trust stuff you read on the internet, that’s my view.
9.46am BST
Other journalists share my assessment of David Cameron’s comments on Grant Shapps.
From the Daily Mail’s John Stevens
Asked if he has full confidence in Grant Shapps, David Cameron does NOT say yes, but says that he's doing a great job
Oh - not a full vote of confidence in Grant Shapps then from his boss David Cameron: https://t.co/RKOSgAruHz
9.43am BST
Last night the Lib Dems issued a formal party press released about the Grant Shapps story. In case you missed it, here it is in full.
Grant Shapps is a fine man and has never done anything dodgy – Paddy Ashdown
Grant Shapps is a wonderful human being, a literary great and has in no way ever brought his party or politics into disrepute, the Chairman of the Liberal Democrat General Election Campaign said.
9.33am BST
Q: Turning to hardworking people you have been talking about, an industrious Wikipedia user has had his account closed. It is alleged that this is the work of your party chairman. Do you have full confidence in Grant Shapps?
Here is David Cameron’s reply in full.
Grant does a great job. He’s made a very clear statement about this. And I’ve got nothing to add to that.
9.24am BST
Q: You say Labour cannot lecture you on poverty. But today’s food bank figures are embarrassing. You don’t have a good record on this, do you?
Cameron says he does not accept this. Poverty is down, and pensioner poverty is down too.
9.23am BST
Cameron says he has put extra money into the NHS every year.
In 2010 Labour said spending extra money on the NHS would be irresponsible. Cameron says his government ignored that.
9.21am BST
David Cameron is taking questions now.
He says he will give priority to the regional media. He is in Bedford.
9.20am BST
Q: What is your view on the impact of immigration?
Johnson says immigration has been very beneficial.
9.17am BST
Q: What do you think of the DPP’s decision not to prosecute Lord Janner?
Johnson says this was regrettable, but that the DPP took that decision because Janner has Alzheimer’s.
9.15am BST
Nick Ferrari says David Cameron was stumped by a question from a 10-year-old girl who asked him if he could pick another politician he would like to win. Cameron could not name anyone. He wanted to win himself.
Ferrari says the same girl is on the line. She asks Johnson what one decision he took he would most regret.
9.14am BST
David Cameron is giving his speech on childcare now. I will post more from the speech when I’ve seen the text, but I will do the Q&A in full.
David Cameron visiting a factory in Bedford where he once bought a shed (apparently not a joke) pic.twitter.com/ljDaJFxGki
9.13am BST
Boris gets about a month ahead of himself on LBC. Asked about Tory housing policy: "I am absolutely clear MY policy is...."
9.08am BST
Q: Couldn’t the anti-SNP talk backfire, and lead to the break-up of the union?
Johnson says the SNP are entitled to their views.
9.05am BST
Q: Why are you only getting involved in the campaign now?
That’s not true, says Johnson. He says he has been doing plenty of campaigning.
9.03am BST
Boris Johnson is doing his LBC phone-in now.
9.00am BST
Labour released details of their cancer treatment announcement overnight. Here are the key points. The quotes are from the Labour news release
Labour’s new investment of £150 million each year from 2016/17 in new diagnostic infrastructure will make it possible to do more tests directly in GP surgeries by ensuring key equipment is available in every town.
He will also say that Labour’s new Cancer Treatments Fund, which will be put in place after the Cancer Drugs Fund expires in 2016, will help kick start the urgent replacement of outdated radiotherapy machines. In spite of official NHS guidance saying that machines should be replaced every 10 years, NHS radiotherapy centres have not always been able to do so, with a recent Labour Freedom of Information request revealing that 1 in 5 are older than that.
The NHS England’s Business Plan 2015-2016 was released at 9.24pm on March 27th – Parliament’s last working day before the General Election. It reveals that the NHS does not now expect to meet the cancer target for people to begin treatment within two months of urgent referral this year, with officials saying that the point they expect the NHS will be meeting the target will now be March 2016.
The key cancer target has already become a potent symbol of the Government’s NHS failure after being missed for the first time at the start of 2014. On current trends another 23,000 patients could be waiting longer than two months to start their treatment, impacting on health and chances of survival, as well as causing patients great anxiety.
The NHS needs a real plan with real money right now – not an IOU.
Yesterday I set out our NHS Rescue Plan for our first 100 days, our first Budget and our first year in office. Now I want to set out the next stage of our fully-funded plan, an investment of £150 million a year, every year in the key equipment patients need to get quick access to cancer tests and improve early diagnosis.
8.49am BST
Meanwhile, Nigel Farage has been talking about the deaths of migrants attempting to cross Mediterranean to get to Europe. He has made similar points over the last few days but his language today will have some resonance, saying they should be “taken back to where they come from”.
I am suggesting they should be making sure that those coming in vessels that are not seaworthy are put on vessels that are seaworthy and taken back to where they come from.
There may be some cases where people genuinely need refugee status and if Britain has to give a helping hand and if we have to give, for example, some Christians refugee status, given that with Iraq, Libya there’s almost nowhere for them to go, then fine.
8.47am BST
The LBC Boris Johnson phone-in has been put back again, until 9am.
8.47am BST
And here is today’s Guardian seat projection.
8.41am BST
Here are today’s YouGov GB polling figures.
Update: Cons lead at 1 - Latest YouGov/The Sun results 21st Apr - Con 35%, Lab 34%, LD 7%, UKIP 13%, GRN 5%; APP -11 http://t.co/EPVhHUzdYT
8.39am BST
Boris Johnson may be running late. His phone-in was due to start at 8.30am, but now it is scheduled for 8.45am.
8.34am BST
Boris Johnson, the Conservative mayor of London, is about to do a phone-in with LBC.
If you haven’t already, do read Robert Booth’s Guardian article about Johnson on the campaign trail. Here’s an excerpt.
The Conservative candidate for Uxbridge and South Ruislip was in the seat Churchill occupied in August 1940 as air force chiefs masterminded the Battle of Britain against Adolf Hitler’s Luftwaffe. The photo opportunity at RAF Uxbridge was part of the Conservative strategy of rolling out Johnson to energise a campaign that otherwise loyal observers such as Margaret Thatcher’s former communications guru Lord Bell have decried as “dreadful, risk averse and boring”.
Johnson’s perceived likeability, deft touch with ordinary people and impression of capability in a crisis have led to voters making him clear favourite to succeed Cameron as party leader and potential prime minister – ahead of Theresa May and George Osborne, according to a YouGov poll last month.
8.29am BST
Good morning. I’m taking over from Mark now.
The Socialist Labour party is launching its manifesto today. Led by Arthur Scargill, the former NUM leader, it standing candidates in some seats in Wales. At a rally last night in Aberavon, where Stephen Kinnock, son of the former Labour leader Neil Kinnock, is Labour’s candidate, Scargill said his party would abolish public schools.
We should abolish all private schools such as Eton, Harrow and Westminster, because they are an elite which gives a better education because of the more money that is pumped into them. We believe all faith schools should be abolished as well because they are a breeding ground for prejudice and intolerance. If Muslims, Buddhist, Catholics or Protestants can go to university together then they can go to school together.
This government and the Labour government before it and the Tory government before that have been taking money from people’s pension funds for years. The mine workers’ pension fund has half of its surplus taken by this government every time there is an actuarial valuation ... the government takes half. If they can do it to us, then what’s the difference in us doing the same thing.
8.03am BST
My colleague Frances Perraudin is with the Lib Dems in London, where Nick Clegg is ruling out any further pay cuts for public sector workers if the party is part of the next government.
"You have done your bit to get the country back on track [with pay cuts]," Clegg tells public sector workers. pic.twitter.com/iogIsCEp9j
"We've only got two weeks left to stop a right wing coalition gov," says Clegg.
Asked where the axe would fall now public sector pay cuts have been ruled out, Clegg says he is confident they can find savings elsewhere.
"Grant Shapps says he doesn't have the time to edit his Wikipedia entry," says Clegg. "It could have been somebody else like Michael Green."
7.51am BST
In case you missed this story overnight, it seems that Ed Miliband has developed an unlikely fanbase of smitten teenage girls, after a 17-year-old student declared her admiration for the Labour leader on Twitter and prompted a flood of replies from other young women.
My colleague Rebecca Ratcliffe reports:
A student, known only as Abby, caused a Twitter storm after declaring herself leader of the #milifandom – a group of enthusiastic Ed Miliband admirers. Fandoms are usually reserved for the likes of Justin Bieber and One Direction, but the #milifandom hashtag has been trending, with scores of young females sharing their affection for the leader.
Abby says the Milifandom, which started last week, is “a movement against the distorted media portrayal of Ed”.
@Cameronettes David we know it's you this isn't going to work mate
7.41am BST
The Tory party chairman Grant Shapps was just on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, where he responded to the report that Wikipedia has blocked a user account on suspicions that it is being used by Shapps, “or someone acting on his behalf” to edit his own page along with the entries of Tory rivals and political opponents.
Shapps said he didn’t edit Wikipedia and he can prove he didn’t because his diary says he was elsewhere at the times the edits were made.
7.33am BST
As Vintagebeauty has commented below the line, the well-connected Andrew Neil tweeted last night that a major Tory donor told him the party’s campaign was “useless”, believing that David Cameron’s “heart is not in it”.
That prompted this reply from the Times columnist Tim Montgomerie.
@afneil DC has wanted out for a while. He has just wanted to go out on some sort of high and hasn't been able to find that high.
7.16am BST
Tesco posts £6.38bn loss, biggest in UK retail history
Not strictly politics, but given the sum involved a huge blow for the coalition’s much-trumpeted economic recovery.
Related: Tesco posts £6.38bn loss; Eurozone finance chiefs discuss Greece - business live
7.06am BST
Hello, and welcome to the Guardian’s election live blog. We are bringing you live coverage every day until 7 May – and in all likelihood well beyond – from 7am till late. As always we kick off with our all-you-need-to-know morning briefing, designed for election fans who don’t spend all night watching TV news or all morning scanning the papers and radio.
I’m Mark Smith, starting this morning’s blog, before Andrew Sparrow takes over later on. We’re on Twitter @marksmith174 and@AndrewSparrow, and reading comments below the line, too, should you want to say hello, ask a question or point out anything we should be covering.
TIMES: Law chief faces new onslaught over Janner #tomorrowspaperstoday #BBCPapers pic.twitter.com/bGc4fY8qPy
They have managed to combine their warnings of economic chaos after 8 May – the threat of excessive borrowing, leftwing influence and instability – with the threat posed by Scottish nationalism. By uniting Nicola Sturgeon and Ed Miliband in the nation’s mind, the Tories have injected a badly needed new ingredient into their warnings about Miliband. Previously, those warnings were not gaining sufficient traction because Miliband had been outperforming expectations.
As with the SNP surge, a significant cause of Lib Dem decline is deep-rooted cultural aversion to the Tories. Not only is the Tory brand toxic for many voters; it turns out to contaminate parties that get too close, as Labour did in the no camp during the Scottish independence referendum. So the Lib Dems can expect little gratitude for serving as a parliamentary prosthesis where there might once have been a liberal, moderate, pro-European limb on the Conservative party. Nor is there any excitement about their potential role as lobbyists for more liberalism in a Labour administration. But that doesn’t mean their humiliation is good for British politics. The space they occupy would otherwise be vacant.
If neither Mr Cameron nor Mr Miliband were able to put together a viable government, a second election would normally follow; but the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act 2011 complicates matters. It provides for a dissolution of Parliament only when there is a specific vote of no confidence in the government or if two thirds of all MPs vote for an election. This makes the prospect of another early general election less likely. In any case, the parties may have little appetite for one given the expense and the prospect of losing support in a fresh contest.
Without a dissolution we would have a legislature but no government, a bit like Belgium, where the prime minister resigned in April 2010 and no new parliamentary majority could be established for almost two years.
Given the volatile state of British feelings about the nation’s relationship with the EU, it really is extraordinary how little the issue has figured in this election campaign. If the issue is so important, why aren’t Conservatives jumping all over Labour for refusing to offer a referendum? Clearly, their strategists have decided the EU referendum is not the critical issue that will turn this tight election campaign to the Tories. They have to know that the most recent polling shows that more voters want to stay in the EU then leave.
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