Andrew Sparrow, Nadia Khomami and Mark Smith 

Election 2015 live: Gordon Brown – the SNP are not offering a penny more than Labour

With two weeks to go on the campaign trail join our political team for all the latest, as the IFS delivers its verdict of each of the main parties tax and spending policies
  
  

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown speaks in Kirkcaldy.
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown speaks in Kirkcaldy. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Evening summary

It was St George’s Day today, and party leaders raced to roll out their visions for a better, prouder and stronger England. While Ukip accused the establishment of “cultural self-loathing”, Gordon Brown said the Conservatives’ anti-Scottish sentiment had turned them into the English National Party, and Nicola Sturgeon maintained her stance that England would need the SNP to keep Labour in check were they to form a government. Here’s everything else that happened.

The big picture

Today’s campaign centred on the economy, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) published its pre-election analysis of the economic policies of the four largest parties: Labour, the Conservatives, the Lib Dems and the SNP. The IFS accused the major parties of keeping voters “in the dark” by spelling out only the “broad outlines” of their tax and spend plans following the general election. The think tank’s deputy director Carl Emmerson said:

There are genuinely big differences between the main parties’ fiscal plans. The electorate has a real choice, although it can at best see only the broad outlines of that choice.

Quite predictably, the parties used various findings as weapons with which to attack their opponents, while simultaneously picking out the negative assessments about their own pledges that they could deny. So voters are still in the dark. One thing was clear though - this is not an issue that parties want to seem weak on. What’s that? “It’s the economy, stupid.” Duh.

What happened today

  • George Osborne faces a £30bn black hole in his spending plans if he is to pay for the Conservatives’ manifesto giveaways and meet his deficit-cutting targets over the next parliament, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The think tank calculated that the Conservatives would have to slash an extra £30bn from Whitehall departments over the next five years — even if they succeeded in raising £10bn from as yet unidentified welfare cuts, and £5bn from anti-tax avoidance measures.
  • The IFS also calculated that debt would be higher under Labour, which would mean higher interest payments for the government, potentially leaving it less well placed to deal with future adverse events.
  • Scotland’s block grant would actually be cut under the SNP’s plans, but not under Labour’s. The IFS said the SNP’s claim to end austerity is misleading.
  • Gordon Brown delivered a campaign speech in Kirkcaldy, where he pledged emergency £5000 for 117 food banks 24 hours after a Labour win. Brown also revealed that Labour will create funding to help on loans to drive pay day lenders out of Scotland; help with energy bills and cookers so children can get hot food; help with bus fares to reach food banks as part of emergency help with finances.
  • Peter Mandelson lent his support to Ed Miliband and said he was proud of the Labour leader. The former Labour cabinet member also said it didn’t seem like David Cameron’s heart is in the campaign anymore.
  • Nicola Sturgeon has said she would support a Labour government even if the Conservatives were the biggest party.
  • Tristram hunt said Labour would fire teachers not qualified or training to become qualified by 2020.
  • A new Survation poll put the Conservatives four points ahead of Labour.
  • And in non election news, Lutfur Rahman, the mayor of Tower Hamlets was kicked out of office after being found guilty of widespread corruption in seeking office last May.

Quote of the day

“They wake up in the morning thinking of how to make Scotland independent. We wake up in the morning thinking of how to advance social justice” - Gordon Brown on the SNP. Regardless of its validity, it’s a great line.

Laugh of the day

That’s it from me today. Join me and the rest of the Guardian election team again tomorrow, as we bring you the latest news, reaction, analysis, pictures, video, and jokes from the campaign trail. Don’t worry, we will continue to do this until polling day, and possibly later.

Updated

A new ComRes poll has the Conservatives four points ahead of Labour.

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt will appear on ITV’s The Agenda tonight, which will air at 10.40pm. On it, he says that voters should not get “too hung up” on the amount of money being promised by political parties for the NHS during the election campaign, adding that he is confident the Conservatives will be able to deliver the 8 billion real-terms increase in health spending they have promised by 2020.

He says there will be “no blank cheque” for the NHS, and there will have to be reforms to deliver efficiency savings.

It’s something we can’t win because the NHS is saying they need 8 billion, they have got a funding gap, and the politicians aren’t being honest about the fact there’s a gap in this funding and then the Conservatives say - to their credit - ‘We will find that 8 billion’ and the media say ‘We don’t believe you’.

We are confident that if we stick to our plan ... we will find that extra sum of money.

Hunt also responds to accusations that the Conservatives are running a “negative” election campaign.

The attacks go both ways. There are attacks on NHS, which I think has done incredibly well in difficult circumstances.

It happens in elections. I’d like to stick up for all politicians ... If we talk about choice (between parties) you say it is very negative. Politicians end up being more wooden and cautious than all of us would like to be as politicians.

We are subject to relentless scrutiny by media in the run-up to the election. That is part of a healthy democracy.

Business leaders have become frustrated at the tactics and tone of the Conservative election campaign, amid concern in British boardrooms that Ed Miliband is mounting a stiffer challenge for Number 10 than expected, the FT is reporting.

Twenty FTSE 100 and other business leaders have told the Financial Times they are anxious that — despite presiding over an economic recovery — David Cameron has not opened a lead over Labour.

In particular, they criticise the strident personal attacks on the opposition and the flurry of big-spending promises that jar with the party’s prudent fiscal record. “The negative campaign has been disastrous,” said one company chairman.

“The strength of the performance of the coalition in terms of delivering real growth and real jobs has become almost background noise,” said another, speaking on condition of anonymity. One FTSE 100 chief said: “Why not play the positive economic note? There is a good story to tell.”

The Press Association have a report up about Nicola Sturgeon’s claims that the SNP would prop up a minority Labour administration even if it ends up with 40 fewer MPs than the Conservatives.

Ms Sturgeon said that if David Cameron could not command a majority in the House of Commons dominated by “anti-Tory” parties then he will not be able to form a government, even if Conservatives are by far the largest single party.

Her comments came as Labour slipped below 30% in a mainstream opinion poll for the first time in the election campaign, taking 29% to the Tories’ 33% in a Survation survey for the Daily Mirror which could see Mr Miliband’s party trailing by 25 MPs or more if repeated on May 7.

As expectations remained high of a hung Parliament with a contingent of as many as 50 SNP MPs after May 7, Ms Sturgeon was asked on BBC2’s Newsnight whether her party would be ready to prop up a Labour government if the party had fewer seats than the Conservatives.

She replied: “Yes. Even if the Tories are the largest party, if there is an anti Tory majority, my offer to Labour is to work together to keep the Tories out.”

Asked if this would remain her position even if Mr Cameron had 30 more MPs than Mr Miliband, she confirmed: “If there is an anti Tory majority, yes, that’s what I’ve been saying all along - I’m not sure why there’s any confusion about it - that we would work with Labour to stop the Tories getting into Downing Street.”

And if the margin was as wide as 40 MPs, she said: “If they can’t command a majority they can’t be a government, that’s the basic rule of how governments are formed I’d have thought.”

And another website, this time by Labour. Click through to find the details of Conservative NHS plans (spoiler: you won’t get very far).

As the campaigns quieten down for the day, press teams are busying themselves promoting their creative endeavours. The Conservatives have set up a whole new website dedicated to Ed Miliband called “just not up to it”. And Scottish Labour have produced this video:

Here’s chief political photographer of The Press Association Stefan Rousseau’s photo of the day.

Both David Cameron and Ed Miliband have refused to take part in BBC Radio 4 show Election Call. Cameron is the first serving prime minister since Harold Wilson to not appear on the show, which has been running since 1974. Though he did go on it when he was in opposition.

War gaming is already under way on the number of seats David Cameron might need to form a minority government after the election, with the critical number set at around 284 to 290, the Guardian’s political editor Patrick Wintour writes.

By the time the final result from St Ives is declared at lunchtime on 8 May it will be clear if Cameron is in that zone, and can start to try to form a government involving the Liberal Democrats and, in a looser arrangement, the Democratic Unionist party in Northern Ireland.

If the Conservatives secure 286 seats, the Liberal Democrats 27 and Ukip one, with the underlying support of nine DUP members, Cameron would be under no pressure to resign.

Back to Kirkcaldy:

Updated

Nicola Sturgeon says SNP would support Labour government regardless of Tory lead

Nicola Sturgeon has said she would support a Labour government even if the Conservatives were the biggest party, Newsnight’s Laura Kuenssberg reports.

Updated

My colleague Severin Carrell is tweeting from Kirkcaldy.

Updated

Gordon Brown pledges emergency £5000 for 117 food banks 24 hours after a Labour win

Gordon Brown is giving a Labour campaign speech in Kirkcaldy, with former Labour first minister Henry McLeish. I’ve got the pre-written text of the speech - though Brown might stray from it from time to time, he usually speaks without notes. These are the key points the former prime minister will make:

  • Brown reveals that on day one of a Labour Government, Scottish Labour will send 167 Scots food banks emergency payment of £5,000 each to tackle poverty crisis.
  • He says Labour will create funding to help on loans to drive pay day lenders out of Scotland; help with energy bills and cookers so children can get hot food; help with bus fares to reach food banks as part of emergency help with finances.
  • One day in the next two weeks will be earmarked Food Bank Poverty Day- with parties asked to explain their policies.
  • Brown says churches and charities should be involved in developing Jim Murphy’s new Scottish anti poverty fund
  • He emphasises that Labour is Scotland’s party for social justice and fairness.

Here’s the full (pre-issued) text of Gordon Brown’s speech:

On May 8 – the day after the election - Scottish Labour under Jim Murphy’s leadership can begin to address the food bank poverty emergency in Scotland.

We can’t wait beyond May 8 so within 24 hours a Labour Government will trigger an emergency plan to tackle hunger in Scotland and immediately pay £1million to ensure food banks across Scotland are better stocked.

Just 5,700 food bank parcels were distributed in 2011, in 2013 it was 71,000 and last year it rocketed to 117,000.

One of the most damning statistics is that Scotland now have more relying on food banks than London, despite London having twice the population.

We now have food bank poverty which comes on top of pay day lender poverty, bedroom tax poverty, zero hours contract poverty, welfare cuts poverty and it is time for new radical measures.

I cannot understand why eight years into their Scottish government the SNP has done so little when they have the power to do so and I cannot understand why the Conservative government has been allowed to get away with doing even less.

If Jim Murphy or I had been in a position of authority in the Scottish or UK governments we would have acted long before now.

Many thousands of Scots are now worse off in the recovery than they were in the global recession. It is now time for public opinion to force a step change.

When food banks are feeding children who would otherwise go hungry, Jim Murphy has taken the lead with a £175million strategy to end the need for food banks using the money we would save by abolishing the bedroom tax.

And because we can’t wait, we will immediately ensure loans can protect people against pay day lenders; as part of emergency help with finances, ensure assistance with bus fares for people in villages and remote areas far from food banks; offer help with fuel bills and cookers to produce hot food.

Like Jim Murphy and Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland Margaret Curran I believe the churches and volunteers who give their time every day should be brought in right at the centre of planning to help administer the new Scottish Social Fund that Jim has pledged to create.

And like Jim and Margaret I want to see the commitment, energy and altruism that food bank helpers have shown mobilised to get to the root causes of poverty and deliver a movement for change that goes beyond politics and to serve the people in most need in Scotland.

But the food bank crisis reflects a wider question – why have the SNP not acted before now? With the powers they have, they could have acted to have mitigated the distress and alleviated the deprivation. But just like on the bedroom tax they have delayed doing what is urgent. And can we now afford days and weeks of constitutional negotiations when people need relief urgently?

With a UK Labour government and with a Labour Scottish Secretary of State delivering action quickly not just on food poverty, we can:

  • Get the 59,000 under 25s into work. We have a plan, financed through the bankers tax and we can act immediately;
  • Secure 1,000 new nurses and 500 doctors. We have the money coming from the Mansion Tax and we can act immediately to provide it;
  • Restore college places – previously cut by 140,000 under the Scottish government. We can act to secure in the first budget, a change in pension tax relief which will fund this initiative.

Others will want to spend their time talking about deals, hung parliaments, coalitions--- obsessed with the insider talk of backroom negotiations at Westminster.

We will continue to talk about what really matters – jobs, poverty, the neglect of the NHS, inequality and the need for new housing. And we will act immediately to tackle these abuses.

Others want this to be the constitutional election – we believe this is the social justice election. We put social justice first and Labour is Scotland’s party of social justice and fairness.

And why do the SNP not act when they have powers in Scotland? When he refused to use the powers available to him to ameliorate the Bedroom Tax, John Swinney gave the game away saying “I have no intention of letting the Westminster Government off the hook”.

This explains the whole SNP approach. They don’t want to act because they want to prove Westminster is to blame for refusing to act. But when they say they won’t let Westminster off the hook they leave thousands of poor Scots ON the hook. It suggests their aim is not ending poverty but exploiting poverty, their priority not to act in pursuit of social justice but to act in pursuit of independence.

That’s the difference, which explains why we need a Labour Government to attack social injustice. They wake up in the morning thinking of how to make Scotland independent. We wake up in the morning thinking of how to advance social justice

And that is why it has to be the Labour Party which is writing the first Budget and not Alex Salmond, who does not share our sense of priorities and who must share the blame for failing to address poverty as First Minister.

The SNP dream is about constitutional change. Our dream is about social change –and our policy for urgent action on food bank poverty means that with the support of the people of Scotland a Labour Government could begin to deliver social change from the morning of May 8.

Updated

Survation also reveal the approval ratings for all party leaders apart from Nick Clegg have dropped in the last week.

Survation poll gives Conservatives four point lead

A new Survation poll puts the Conservatives four points ahead of Labour. This means that Labour’s support has dropped by 4% since last week.

Updated

You can watch a video of Peter Mandelson on Channel 4 News (due to air at 7pm) here.

Guardian writer John Crace has written a sketch about the IFS’ despair as it finds no party’s imaginary numbers add up.

Paul Johnson, the director of the IFS, was quick to get the caveats in early. “If we take seriously the manifesto pledges,” he began, something he clearly didn’t but felt obliged to give the impression that someone in a parallel universe just might, “there are a still a lot of unknowns, even allowing for the known unknowns.” The possibility that someone with an even lower IQ than Donald Rumsfeld might have been responsible for coming up with some of the manifesto numbers was clearly on Johnson’s mind.

Out of deference to Carl Emmerson, one of the co-authors of the report, the briefing was held in a near airless basement. Emmerson is the IFS deputy director and one of the sharpest minds around, but he is not a man who looks entirely comfortable with daylight. “Ideally we would have many more spreadsheets,” he announced, looking down at his laptop in preference to making eye contact with his audience. Regret for the absence of spreadsheets is an emotion few outside the IFS are ever likely to experience.

Who’s been propositioning Nigel Farage? Own up.

Updated

Nick Clegg was on 5 News earlier, where he said he was “confident” that he would retain his Sheffield Hallam seat and the Lib Dems would outperform critics’ predictions. Clegg also said he had “bags of energy” and wanted to carry on in politics. Here’s some copy from PA:

The Lib Dem leader shrugged off a poll of 1,300 voters conducted for the programme by YouGov, which found that 28% trusted him against 63% who did not.

“I have a slight feeling at the moment that there’s a lot of distrust and cynicism in politics generally, and that’s something we see not only in our country but across the developed world,” he said.

“It’s understandable, because we have been through a really, really rocky time as a country. People have seen bankers mess things up in 2008 and yet they feel that they are being hurt for it and they feel, quite rightly, angry and they say to the politicians ‘Hang on a minute, how have you let this happen?’ I understand that.”

Asked whether he was preparing for life outside politics if he loses his seat on May 7, Mr Clegg said: “I’m not complacent. I’m confident I’ll be re-elected. I’m very confident that this cottage industry of pessimism about Liberal Democrat prospects is way overdone.

We are going to confound our critics once again. We’ve done it many, many times before. I’m only 48, I’ve got bags of energy, I’d like to carry on.”

After David Cameron famously said his favourite political joke was “Nick Clegg”, the Lib Dem leader was asked if he had a favourite joke about the PM, but responded: “Probably not any I can share. I’ll leave that for the memoirs.”

Updated

My colleague Holly Watt has been looking at recent party donations. She writes:

The new Electoral Commission figures showed that Labour received £1.1million in a week, while the Conservatives were given £492,512.

Apart from donations from the unions UNISON and USDAW, the largest donation given in that week was £300,000 to Labour from Allamhouse Ltd, a company headed by the Hull City owner Assem Allam.

Donors to the Tories included Stanley and Beatrice Tollman, who built up a string of hotels. The Tollmans gave £10,000 each at the beginning of the month, but the Conservatives have returned the donations after it emerged that Stanley Tollman pleaded guilty to tax evasion in 2008.

Other Conservative donors include Christopher Rokos, one of the co-founders of the Brevan Howard hedge fund, who gave the Conservatives £170,000.

Peter Mandelson says David Cameron's heart isn't in the campaign anymore

Former Labour cabinet member Peter Mandelson is to be interviewed on Channel 4 News at 7pm this evening. I’ve been sent a transcript of the interview ahead of it being aired. His key statements are below.

Mandelson says Labour will not ignore the deficit:

Whilst business people might not like the individual tax changes or whatever, they’re not facing a Labour Party that’s going back to the old nationalisation. They’re not facing a Labour Party that doesn’t care about the deficit and isn’t going to exercise any fiscal responsibility. And they’re not facing a Labour Party that’s going to tax them out of existence.

So I think there’s quite a lot of fear about the Labour Party but I also think it’s misplaced.

Mandelson says David Cameron’s heart isn’t in the campaign anymore:

I started feeling at the end of last week that something had shifted. That the plates had moved and Labour has captured a Zeitgeist in this campaign and the most striking feature of it is what’s happened to the two leaders.

Miliband has moved forwards. He gained credibility. He’s exceeded most people’s expectations. I suppose in a sense mine as well.

David Cameron on the other hand has moved backwards. He’s got to a position now when you wonder whether his heart’s really in this campaign anymore. And that’s very important because campaigns are driven by a rhythm, a momentum, a dynamic. And that is now flowing strongly in Labour’s favour.

Neither of the parties are so far headed for a clear, clean win. And the way I look at them is this, they seem to have a mirror image of each other’s problem.

For the Conservatives the source of their unpopularity is not so much what they’ve done, so much as who they are. And that is quite a fundamental problem. People feel of them is though they’re a member of an elite club. People who are really quite seriously out of touch with the day to day living and experiences of a mass of people in this country.

Labour in a sense has the mirror image of the Tory problem. It’s not so much who Labour are. I think in the main they like their values and like what they stand for and feel they are more in touch, but they have a problem about their record from the last government in the last two years. It’s where people feel fairly or not that we allowed debt, borrowing and the deficit to run away from us.

Ed Miliband is absolutely right to make clear and he’s got to do so again and again in the face of all this media frenzy that the Labour Party is not going to form a coalition or a pact with the SNP.

Mandelson says he’s proud of Ed Miliband:

I had a slight fear about him before the campaign began that he sort of withdrew too much as it were from the media. Obviously under a lot of unpleasant pressure and personal attacks from certain parts of the printed media.

What he’s doing instead is basically going towards the camera, embracing the media and talking through the media to the public as a whole, with a combination of conviction and passion but also essentially, credibility.

He’s been very careful about what he’s promised and that’s where his credibility comes through. And that is why I think he has built support during this campaign.

He has way exceeded my expectations and actually I’m proud of him.

Updated

Here’s a Guardian video of Nigel Farage asking why we’re ashamed of St George’s Day?

Farage says the Irish have St Patrick’s Day, the Welsh: St David’s Day, and the Scottish have an optional public holiday for St Andrew’s Day. Farage accuses Westminster of teaching people to be ashamed of their English heritage

Chuka Umunna has said he does not want a “seismic shift” in business policy in an interview with the FT. “The old solutions of whacking taxes on business, increasing the regulatory burden, going for a command/control approach to your economy are in no way going to really help you tackle the challenges of the 21st century,” he said.

Labour have responded to Lectern-gate.

The Conservative press team have a thing about Miliband’s lectern.

Tristram hunt says Labour would fire teachers not qualified or training to become qualified by 2020

There was an education debate on the BBC’s daily politics show earlier, featuring the Conservatives’ Nicky Morgan, the Lib Dems’ David Laws, the Greens’ James Humphreys, Ukip’s Jonathan Arnott, and Labour’s Tristram Hunt. The show was hosted by Andrew Neil and BBC’s education editor Branwen Jeffreys. I’ve compiled a summary of some of the key points of the debate - the most important being that Tristam Hunt said Labour would fire teachers not qualified or training to become qualified by 2020.

My verdict of the debate as a whole? No one came out on top. Nicky Morgan refused to acknowledge the attainment gap, Tristram Hunt could barely give a straight answer to any of the questions directed at him, David Laws used the coalition as an excuse for his party’s failures, James Humphreys justified his policies by using the old adage “because we just can” and Jonathan Arnott sounded like a reactionary in most instances. Out of all of them, Humphreys was probably the least evasive.

What struck me the most is that when asked whether it’s acceptable for an education secretary to send his or her children to a private school, all panellists answered yes. So they can’t be expecting to improve the standard of schools that much, then.

On free schools:

  • David Laws said both sides in a coalition don’t get what they want. He said there were difference between him and Nicky Morgan, including on the issue of holding academy chains to account by Ofsted, a view he shares with the chief inspector of schools.
  • Nicky Morgan said there’s nothing to stop Ofsted asking an Academy chain what they do to support specific schools. She said there wasn’t a great deal of difference between her and Laws, and that the Lib Dems should be standing up for their record. She said free schools offer the opportunity to not just accept what’s available but set up new schools. Their unpopularity is not a failure of the Conservative party, they just have to explain it to the public.
  • Humphreys said free schools don’t work with other people.
  • Arnott said free schools haven’t got the kind of innovation we need.
  • Hunt said the Lib Dems voted for unqualified teachers and for the free schools programme, but not on the quality of teaching and strength of teaching. You’ve obsessed about structural reform, he said. Labour wants all teachers to be qualified as a sign of respect to the profession. Not anyone can turn up and be a teacher, you need training. The best thing that can happen to children from disadvantaged backgrounds is good teaching. Labour support a royal college of teaching, he said.
  • Branwen Jeffreys pointed out that were just as many unqualified teachers under Labour. Hunt said the difference was they were on a pathway to becoming qualified. The most high performing education systems around the world put effort into having qualified teachers. Andrew Neil asked what the evidence is from this country. Hunt said we know having qualified teachers is much better for results. He was unable to cite any research. Morgan asked if Hunt would tell 17,000 people they cannot teach, she asked? Hunt said if you’re not working towards qualified teaching status you don’t deserve to be in the classroom. Yes, he would fire them, he said.

On private schools

  • Arnott said Ukip would convert existing schools into grammar schools over time. This would take a few years working with a new cohort. Schools have converted many times in the past, Ukip want an education system that meets the needs of all children. Humphreys said the Greens want to take charitable status away from private schools. Their resources should be available to all in the country. And faith schools should have an admissions policy and integrate into the education system. Access is most crucial. The Greens are not saying no faith involvement, but that faiths should not run schools, because it’s divisive, he said.
  • Andrew Neil asked why Morgan, Hunt and Laws all went to private schools and Oxbridge. Hunt said there’s been a tightening of the circle in many professions. Labour want to remove private schools’ business rate relief unless they collaborate with other schools. The answer to social mobility is to invest in early years, he said, citing closure of sure start centres as an example of Conservative failings.
  • Laws said too many of professions have disproportionate number of people from private schools. The Lib Dems have introduced the pupil premium, which has narrowed the gap.
  • Both Morgan and Hunt said they would support the pupil premium. Hunt said he thought more should be done than that though. Children whose parents are working but aren’t well off aren’t eligible for pupil premium, he said.

On tuition fees:

  • Morgan said raising the fees is not Conservative policy as the current policy is working. The alternatives to university are also important, she said, such as apprenticeships.
  • Hunt said the current rate of tuition fees is putting off young people from disadvantaged background going into university.
  • Laws said the Lib Dems had the explanation of going into coalition for breaking their pledge on tuition fees, but Labour broke their pledge not to introduce tuition fees and then tripled them.
  • Humphreys said Greens’ policy of scrapping tuition fees isn’t about magic money trees, it would be about raising the amount we spend on public sector to the levels they spend in Germany.

On child care:

  • Morgan said the Tories will spend a billion pounds more on child care than in the last parliament. They know they can pay for it, she said.
  • Laws said Morgan and Hunt would give more child care hours to young people from advantaged backgrounds whose parents are working, but poorer children don’t get that. Morgan said the best way to help people is help them get a job.
  • Hunt said if you want to battle inequality you begin in early years, which is why Labour supports early year investment.
  • Arnott said Ukip would make sure all primary schools are able to provide childcare outside of normal school hours. Schools will be open from 8am to 6pm under Ukip.
  • Humphreys said good quality child care should not require the endless complexity of vouchers. Childcare should be available for all. Arnott responded that the Greens haven’t funded that so it’s absolute nonsense. Humphreys said we’re a wealthy country and if we want to fund education and childcare the money is there.

The panellists were then all then asked to answer a number of quick questions:

Q: At what age should children receive sex education in schools
Morgan: 11
Laws: 7
Humphreys: vary from school to school
Arnott: 11
Hunt: We’ll consult with professionals

Q: Is there enough discipline in schools?
Laws: Yes
Hunt: There’s always more to be done, which is why we need qualified teachers
Arnott: No, we need better behaviour management
Humphreys: Yes, but we need to help teachers teach in more interesting and engaging ways

Q: Is it acceptable for education secretary to send children to private school?
Hunt: Yes
Laws: Yes
Morgan: Yes
Humphreys: Yes
Arnott: Yes

You can watch the debate again on the BBC News channel at 8.30pm.

Updated

Hello, I’m taking over from Andrew now for the rest of the day. Stay tuned for the latest developments as we tie up all the loose ends from today’s election campaign. I’m on Twitter @nadiakhomami and I’ll keep an eye on your comments below the line as well, so let me know if there’s anything I’ve missed.

I’ve just seen that Stephen Hawking has given his backing to Labour and posed with his local Labour candidate Daniel Zeichner for a poster. Perhaps the professor would consider a second career in political polling? If you can predict physics, you can most certainly predict the results of the British general election. Right?

Focus group shows Ed Miliband is winning over voters in the campaign

Britain Thinks has released it latest floating voters focus group report. It has been conducting focus groups as part of the Battleground Britain project it is conducting with the Guardian, and this report is from a focus group conducted on Tuesday, in Taunton Deane, a Lib Dem/Conservative contest (pdf).

The whole thing is worth reading, but here are some conclusions that struck me as particularly interesting.

  • Ed Miliband is winning over some voters in the campaign.

In general, the campaign has led to existing preferences hardening and most of our panelists were reasonably certain of who they were likely to vote for in May. For some, however, voting intention has been affected (if not fundamentally changed) by the better-than-expected performance of Miliband and Sturgeon in the debates, a few symbolic policy announcements, and perceptions of the local candidates.

And here are three quotes from participants.

“I think I feel more favourable toward Labour actually. I think it’s probably due to Ed Miliband’s performance. I think he’s got stronger. I was impressed that he attended the opposition leaders’ debate and that he’s stood up and taken responsibility for the mistakes they’ve made.”

“I’m not really a Labour man and I had a poor opinion of Ed Miliband but I’ve warmed to him. It makes me think he’s not had a fair crack of the whip because he’s come across well.”

“I didn’t know anything about Ed Miliband before, I just thought he was a bit of a bumbling idiot because he doesn’t come across as very articulate. But then when I saw the feature on him with his wife and kids and the opposition debate and I saw him as very similar to David Cameron. I thought ‘I quite like them both’.”

  • Voters were not impressed by David Cameron’s decision not to take part in the second debate, although some did not realise that this was his decision.

Most were surprised at David Cameron’s absence in the opposition leaders’ debate and thought it impacted negatively on him; however, some thought that this was because he was deliberately and unfairly excluded.

  • Nigel Farage came out of the debates badly.

Most, even those who had previously been considering Ukip, thought that Farage had done badly out of the debates, coming across as personally dislikable.

  • Voters would have been more likely to vote Lib Dem in Taunton Deane if Jeremy Browne were standing again.

That’s all from me, Andrew Sparrow, for today.

My colleague Nadia Khomami is taking over now.

Updated

Tonight STV will broadcast At Home with Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell, the first of five specials profiling party leaders in advance of the general election.

Filmed over a couple of weeks, starting at the SNP’s spring conference at the end of March, the first minister and her husband - who is chief executive of the SNP - answer a series of soft but still quite revealing questions about their relationship, their public profile and who is in charge of the remote.

Sturgeon is filmed at one point with the fashion designers Totty Rocks, whom she has championed since she became first minister, issuing a press release as she made her inaugural speech that detailed their work as designers of the dress that she was wearing that day.

One of the things I live with in politics and public life is [people discussing] what you wear and I can’t really stop people doing that, so I thought if people were going to talk about what I wear, wouldn’t it be good if they were talking about who designed it, who made it and if that’s a Scottish company, so teaming up with Totty Rocks has been fantastic.

The interviewer also asks Sturgeon about increased media scrutiny, in particular about the fact that she and Peter do not have children.

Sturgeon responds:

I suppose people have an understandable curiosity. On the other hand Alex Salmond doesn’t have children. He might tell you differently but I’m not aware of reading an interview or seeing an interview with Alex Salmond asking that question ...

The idea that you would ever make a conscious decision about these things, some women possibly do and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I certainly, we certainly, didn’t.

In terms of bad habits, it will come as little surprise that Sturgeon admits to a Twitter habit. Murrell concurs: “Yes, switching off from social media, or not switching off, and when in bed you make one final check when you should just switch off from these things and leave them behind.”

The Green party published a report today saying the south west of England could produce 100% of its energy needs from renewables. It was launched by the economist and Green MEP for the south west Molly Scott Cato.

The IFS has rejected claims by Nicola Sturgeon at first minister’s questions in the Scottish parliament that they got their figures wrong about SNP borrowing plans for 2019/20. Sturgeon said the SNP wanted to borrow 1.6% of GDP that year, not the 1.4% “assumed” by the IFS.

The IFS responded:

As you will probably have gathered from reading our document, we did not actually ‘assume’ 1.4% of GDP borrowing, this was the outcome of using [the SNP’s] stated plans for total spending, plus estimates of the effect of their tax measures. In terms of the implications for public spending, the only assumption we made was that they increased spending in the way they said they would.

On Sky News earlier Jim Murphy, the Scottish Labour leader, said: “We’re pretty clear there will be no coalition, there will be no formal deal with the Labour Party and the SNP.”

The Tories have interpreted that as Murphy confirming that there will be an informal deal. They have put out this statement from George Osborne.

Ed Miliband’s campaign is now in meltdown as Labour’s most senior figure in Scotland has given the game away – Ed Miliband’s only route into Downing Street is in the pocket of the SNP.

Nicola Sturgeon has also been responding to the IFS report on Twitter.

And Kevin Pringle, the SNP’s communications chief, is making a similar point.

They are both referring to these comments from Ed Miliband.

Panelbase poll gives Labour 3-pt lead

There is a new Panelbase poll out today.

If George Galloway loses in Bradford West, where is is standing for re-election as a Respect MP, he has an alternative career plan.

Updated

Sturgeon rejects IFS claims about impact of SNP's spending plans on Scotland

There were heated clashes over the IFS report in the Scottish parliament after Nicola Sturgeon was challenged by her Labour opponents to respond to the IFS’s conclusion that SNP plans would lead by 2019 to deeper UK spending cuts than Labour. (See 2.02pm.)

With Scottish Labour deputy leader Kezia Dugdale insisting the SNP’s claim to want to “end austerity” was now no longer credible, the first minister accused the IFS of ignoring several key parts and accused Dugdale of a “total and utter ramble”.

Dugdale said: “The truth is that, whatever the first minister is calling it, full fiscal autonomy is a bad deal for Scotland. It is not autonomous, it is not responsible and, after this morning, we know that it simply is not credible.”

Claiming its report was “full of assumptions and speculations,” Sturgeon said the IFS had ignored potential increases in tax revenue and cracking down on tax avoidance.

She said the SNP wanted to borrow 1.6% of GDP in 2019-20, and accused the IFS of wrongly assuming it was 1.4% that year. The IFS have rejected her complaint, insisting that a 1.4% borrowing figure was the direct extrapolation from the SNP’s stated plans for total spending and the effects of their tax measures.

Sturgeon added: “I want to take longer to eliminate the deficit than other parties do. That is because I want us to have the ability to invest more in our economy, in our public services and in lifting people out of poverty.”

Even Tory-supporting commentators on the Spectator admit that Ed Miliband has more momentum than Cameron going into the fortnight of the campaign. Speaking on the magazine’s View from 22 podcast, after interviewing David Cameron, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth said Ed Miliband was having a better campaign than expected and was outperforming a passionless Cameron.

Looking ahead to the final two weeks, Nelson said one of the key questions was whether Miliband could “keep up his rather extraordinary momentum”. He added:

We all expected, lets be honest, Ed Miliband’s campaign to be tragicomedy. One where he would be eating bacon sandwiches badly ... but in the last few weeks he’s been exactly the reverse. We see him stepping off buses to the cheers and whoops of hen parties, we see him giving decent performances on television ... [It is] making voters think twice about him. The proposal to ban non-doms was a very effective, a very clever, and a very simple promise from Labour, which just gave a promissory note about its values ... and I think that went down pretty well with voters. I don’t think either [the parties] will have a similar card to play in the next two weeks.

It will basically be this odd Miliband momentum versus whatever the Tories can do to persuade England to be afraid of Scotland.

Forsyth added:

Watching him [Cameron] on the stump you can see he is trying to be more passionate. The irony is that this is a high stakes election, the size of the state is on the ballot, the union is on the ballot, Britain’s place in Europe is on the ballot ... But at the moment it seems to be Labour who are more effective at communicating what their answers to those questions are.

Clegg says Tories are essentially a suburban English party

Speaking on the Liberal Democrat battle bus, which is currently travelling from Brecon in Wales back to London, Nick Clegg was asked to comment on Gordon Brown’s suggestion that David Cameron was trying to whip up English nationalist feeling.

Even if the Tories didn’t go on and on about this, which they are doing of course to extract political advantage at election time, the fact still is that the SNP themselves are saying they would hold Labour to ransom, so it’s perfectly legitimate to take the SNP at their word.

The Liberal Democrat leader said “the wholesale replacement of Labour north of the border by the SNP” was one of the most important political shifts in a long time and that it was “perfectly legitimate” to say it would have profound consequences.

But, he said, the Conservative party’s tactics were a consequence of them giving up on winning support in Scotland.

The Conservative party is not a UK party. They have one MP. They’ve given up on Scotland. You wouldn’t behave the way the Conservative party is, where you only try and mobilise one voter group in one part of the United Kingdom, if you wanted to be a truly national party.

The Conservative party is basically an English party, and principally a suburban English party. It has no presence in large parts of the United Kingdom and it’s been wiped out in much of the North of England. I look at my own patch - as you know we took Sheffield Hallam from the Conservatives in 1997 when they had lots of Conservative councillors. There’s now not a single Conservative councillor in Sheffield.

Nicola Sturgeon’s insistence that Scotland’s large fiscal gap can be closed by rapidly accelerating Scottish economic growth have been challenged by figures in a new report from Fiscal Affairs Scotland, the economics think tank.

The FAS report shows Scottish GDP has never risen fast enough to allow Scotland to reach the higher than 5% annual growth needed to close a fiscal gap which, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said earlier this week, would grow each year to reach nearly £10bn by 2019/20.

This data helps explain why Nicola Sturgeon and her deputy John Swinney are now soft-pedalling so much now on pressing for full fiscal autonomy – otherwise known as devo max in the UK.

The key issue is that Scottish public spending is far higher per head than the UK, at £1,300 per capita higher. So to close that huge blackhole identified by the IFS, GDP would have to grow dramatically and consistently to avoid swingeing spending cuts, tax rises or huge levels of extra borrowing.

The report by John McLaren, an FAS co-director, has confirmed Scottish GDP levels are far more volatile than the UK’s when a geographic share of North Sea oil is included. He has also discovered Scotland was technically in recession in 1999 when it recorded negative growth.

After recalculating Scotland’s historic GDP using new measures (which include crime and prostitution proceeds, as well as R&D spending), McLaren finds that once fluctuating oil revenues are included, Scottish GDP fell from a peak of 14.7% higher than the UK in 2008 down to 6.1% above in 2013.

That GDP figure is set to slump further for 2014 and 2015 because of the collapse in oil prices.

Excluding North Sea oil – something first minister Nicola Sturgeon says is justifiable to prove how strong Scotland’s economy is - Scotland’s average onshore GDP since 1999 has been at 1.7% in cash terms compared to 2% for the UK.

Scottish and UK GDP per head

The FAS also shows that no country in the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development has seen GDP average growth above 3% since 1999. In 2013, and including North Sea oil, Scotland sat at 15th in the OECD GDP league table, just above the UK at 16th.

McLaren also believes using GDP to measure Scotland’s actual wealth is misleading because so much Scottish industry – North Sea oil, whisky, salmon and banking for instance - is owned and controlled by non-Scottish companies.

As the Guardian established last year, more than 70% of Scotland’s economic output is owned outside Scotland – double the UK figure. McLaren says “net national income” (NNI) is a far more accurate measure. Using NNI, Scotland is either joint equal to the UK at 14th in the OECD league table, or at 17th if a more rigorous measure is used.

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London Transport has been dragged into a general election controversy in Northern Ireland involving those potential local kingmakers the Democratic Unionist Party.

Ballymena-based company Wrightbus makes ‘Routemaster’ buses for Transport for London.

The DUP - in the heartland of Paisley country, capital Ballymena - launched its manifesto this week to the backdrop of one of the famous red doubledecker buses.

The PR stunt has come under fire from the nationalist SDLP which cried foul. East Londonderry SDLP representative John Dallat said the use of a taxpayer-funded product - Wrightbus receives support from the local Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment - broke electoral rules.

These ban taxpayer-funded resources from being used in election campaigning.

In a statement TFL said had it been asked, it “would not have given permission for the bus to be used given pre-election rules for public bodies”. Wrightbus has declined to comment about the controversy. Its founder 87 year old William Wright was one of those who signed the nomination papers for Ian Paisley Junior who is defending his North Antrim seat for the DUP.

Lunchtime summary

  • Labour has dismissed the SNP’s anti-austerity rhetoric as bogus after the IFS said that Scotland’s block grant would actually be cut under the SNP’s plans, but not under Labour’s. (See 2.02pm.)

Here’s the latest election video from the Guardian’s John Harris. He has been investigating the plight of the Tories in the north east.

IFS says Scotland's block grant would fall under SNP plans, but not under Labour's

The Institute for Fiscal Studies report says Scotland’s block grant would be lower under the SNP’s plans than under Labour’s. This is because the IFS says the SNP’s claim to end austerity is misleading (see 11.39am) and because, although its plans imply almost exactly the same level of total spending from 2015-15 to 2018-19 as Labour, it plans slower growth in spending in 2019-20. On Scotland’s block grant the report (pdf) says.

In this illustrative scenario, the block grant for Scotland would be cut under the Conservatives between 2015–16 and 2019–20, but by slightly less than the overall cut to departmental spending. In contrast, under Labour and the Liberal Democrats the block grant for Scotland would increase, but by less than the increase in total departmental spending. (In part, this arises from how the Barnett formula works: the level of spending per head is greater in Scotland than in England, and so the same pounds-per-head increase in spending would represent a smaller proportionate budget increase for Scotland.) In fact, the block grant for Scotland would be increased by slightly more under the Liberal Democrats than under Labour in this illustrative scenario, despite their slightly smaller increase in overall departmental spending, because the Liberal Democrats have pledged greater increases than Labour in spending on the NHS and education (which both count as ‘comparable English spending’). The SNP plans imply lower growth in total departmental spending between 2015–16 and 2019–20 than the plans of Labour and the Liberal Democrats. This, combined with the fact they have not pledged to protect education spending (which is ‘comparable English spending’), actually results, in this illustrative scenario, in a small cut in the block grant for Scotland

Margaret Curran, the shadow Scottish secretary, said this showed that SNP claims to want to end austerity were false.

Today is the day the SNP’s rhetoric collided with the reality.

This revelation from the IFS exposes the true reality of the SNP’s plans. The independent experts at the IFS show clearly that the SNP will cut Scotland’s budget.

For all the bombast and the bluster of the SNP it has now been conclusively shown that their anti-austerity posturing is nothing more than a front. Their plans would extend austerity and harm Scotland. And as is always the case the cuts would be felt by the poorest and most vulnerable in our communities. We cannot let that happen.

Updated

Cameron says south west would lose out under Labour/SNP government

On his visit to Penzance earlier, David Cameron renewed his warnings about the impact of having a minority Labour government dependent on the SNP. The south west of England would lose out, he claimed. He said the region was already suffering because Labour did not care about anything “west of Bristol”.

Now imagine what it would be like if Alex Salmond was calling the shots. What chance do you think there would be of CAP (common agricultural policy) money staying here in Cornwall for our farmers rather than being taken up to Scotland as the SNP suggests?

What chance do you think there would be of the A303 being dualled, or the extra work on the A30, or the investment in the trains? What chance would that have of happening when you have got a bunch of politicians who are only interested in one part of our United Kingdom? So I am very fearful of what could happen if this toxic tie-up between Labour and the SNP takes place.

There’s no sign of a video yet from Ed Miliband, but he posted a message on Twitter.

There is nothing on Nick Clegg’s Twitter feed. Perhaps he suffers from “cultural self-loathing”. (See 1.22pm.) But Nigel Farage has put out a tweet.

David Cameron has not been celebrating St George’s Day by morris dancing. But he has recorded a video message to mark the occasion.

The FT’s Giles Wilkes admires the IFS’s expertise at euphemism.

Ukip accuses establishment of 'cultural self-loathing'

At a briefing this morning Peter Whittle, Ukip’s culture spokesman, accused the establishment of “cultural self-loathing”. He said St George’s Day should be an “inclusive opportunity” to come together to celebrate common values.

A country is not just its economy and its identity cannot just be read on a balance sheet. We believe in our hearts and our minds that this is a great country to be proud of and part of.

But for too long I think we have lived with a political and cultural establishment which has shown a sort of disdain for England and doubted Britain as a whole and has discouraged pride in it. Their embarrassment about our past, their lack of concern for our history has permeated our culture.

Patriotism of the many is often sneered at. We have a society which seems to live in a state of cultural cringe.

We in Ukip reject this negativity. We think such cultural self-loathing is destructive. We believe that benign patriotism is a force for good, a force for unity.

Labour received more than £1m in donations in second week of campaign

Labour received more than £1m in donations in the second week of the election campaign, more than twice as much as the Conservative party, the Press Association reports. The Lib Dems were given £50,000 and Ukip £8,000, according to figures from the Electoral Commission, while the Scottish Greens reported receiving £9,124 of public funds. Ukip also reported £63,000 worth of donations late, the commission said.

And here is David Cameron on the IFS report.

What the IFS show is that a Labour government would have to borrow £90bn more. That would be a risk to our recovery, a risk to our economy, a risk to jobs.

And here is David Laws, the Lib Dem education minister, on the IFS findings.

The IFS could not be clearer - when it comes to the economy the Liberal Democrats are the most transparent and are the party that will end austerity the earliest.

By contrast, the IFS lift the lid on Tory plans to cut public spending to the bone and accuse them of burying details of their the plans to shrink the state.

They also shine a light on the sheer scale of Labour’s deficit denial, which includes yet unspecified levels of borrowing, despite starving the NHS of the cash it needs.

Miliband says he does not accept IFS claim about debt under Labour

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said today that the IFS claim that debt would be £90bn higher under Labour than under the Conservatives (see 10.24am) was wrong.

The IFS assumptions are based on three different things, which I frankly don’t accept. The first is based on the idea that when it comes to our plan it’s not simply the budget in balance, which is what they say our plan is, we want a current surplus.

Secondly, they pick out a particular year for when we are going to achieve it. And thirdly, I don’t accept this point that the Tories are even going to achieve their plans.

Kellie Maloney, the former boxing promoter who received a standing ovation at the Ukip conference in February after talking about her experience as a transsexual, told a press conference this morning she could not commit to backing the party at the election. “I’m not even sure who I’m going to vote for myself,” she said.

Recorded crime in England and Wales has gone up by 2%, even though crime survey figures, which measure people’s experience of crime, suggest it fell by 7%.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, issued this statement.

These figures show the first rise in recorded crime for ten years and expose the shocking complacency of David Cameron and Theresa May over crime and policing.

And it shows the risk posed by the Tories who the IFS have this morning confirmed have the most extreme plans for cuts of any political party – cuts which risk thousands more police officers being lost the next three years than in the last five.

Sturgeon under pressure over SNP Twitter troll

The resumption of first minister’s questions after the Easter recess saw a fractious exchange between Nicola Sturgeon and deputy Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale on the thorny subject of online abuse.

Dugdale challenged Sturgeon to sack the SNP candidate for Edinburgh South, Neil Hay, after a story in the Edinburgh Evening News this morning revealed that Hay had described no voters in last year’s referendum as “quislings” and made disparaging remarks about elderly voters in anonymous Twitter posts.

Sturgeon responded by condemning the comments and language used, but said it was up to the electorate to decide Hay’s fate. “Neil Hay has rightly apologised. I think that given we face an election two weeks today it’s now up to the voters to decide.”

Dugdale said that Sturgeon’s condemnation didn’t go far enough, and went on to list a number of recent incidents where she had had to apologise to victims of online abuse from her supporters.

“She’s had to apologise to James Cook at the BBC, to Faisal Islam of Sky News, and a young TV debate audience member who happened to say that she liked what Labour had to say. Rather than simply empathising with the victims so needs to show some leadership and take on the perpetrators. And that starts with sacking Neil Hay.”

Sturgeon replied: “I do lead by example when it comes to calling out behaviour that I consider unacceptable and I will always do that, regardless of where that unacceptable behaviour comes from.”

She then went on to name prominent Labour activist Ian Smart, who, Sturgeon said, had earlier this month described the SNP as “fascist scum”.

“It’s not the first time he’s used remarks like that,” countered Sturgeon. “Before [Kezia Dugdale] comes to me lecturing me on what she expects me to do about SNP members, can I politely suggest that she puts her own house in order first?”

With the SNP the most active political party on social media, as we reported yesterday, this is likely to be a running theme for the rest of the campaign.

Updated

Lutfur Rahman has been ordered to pay £250,000 in costs, the Standard’s Joe Watts reports.

Here is today’s Guardian three-minute election interview, with Jonathan Freedland and Polly Toynbee considering why the Tories are stirring up English nationalism.

Lutfur Rahman has described the court ruling as “a shock” and “surprising to say the least” in a statement from Tower Hamlets First.

Today’s judgment has come as a shock – the mayor strongly denies any wrongdoing and had full confidence in the justice system, and so this result has been surprising to say the least.

We are seeking further legal advice on the matter in relation to a judicial review.

A more detailed statement clarifying our response will be released shortly.

John Biggs, the Labour candidate who was beaten by Lutfur Rahman in the Tower Hamlets mayoral election last May, has described the court ruling as “a victory for honest politics”.

Today’s ruling is a victory for honest politics. By setting out to break the rules and going to extraordinary lengths to win last May’s mayoral election, Lutfur Rahman and his allies robbed the people of Tower Hamlets of the free and fair mayoral election they deserved and betrayed everyone in our community who trusted and voted for him.

People from across our community have been badly let down by the mayor. After five years of abuse of public funds and public trust, it’s time that residents have a council that is again on their side, that restores faith in free and fair elections and heals divisions in our community.

The mayoral election will now be re-run. It will be an opportunity for all the people of our borough to vote to reject, once and for all, the kind of corrupt politics that the petitioners, this Election Court and the Commissioner’s judgment has exposed.

I will do anything I can to help restore trust and confidence in local democracy in Tower Hamlets and bring about reconciliation in our diverse community, to heal the rancour and bitterness that has built up in the borough in the last five years.

Updated

Boris Johnson has welcomed the Lutfur Rahman ruling.

The Guardian’s Rajeev Syal has this report from the high court, which you can read in full here:

The mayor of Tower Hamlets has been kicked out of office after being found guilty of widespread corruption in seeking office last May.

The mayoral election in the east London borough will be rerun after Lutfur Rahman and his supporters were found to have been involved in vote-rigging, seeking spiritual influence through local imams, and wrongly branding his Labour rival a racist.

Rahman, who has been banned from seeking office again, was also found to have allocated local grants to buy votes.

Judge Richard Mawrey QC handed down his verdict on Thursday after a 10-week hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice.

A group of four residents had called for last May’s mayoral election, in which Rahman triumphed over Labour rival John Biggs, to be declared void and rerun.

Rahman - who is Britain’s first directly-elected Muslim mayor - won the ballot after a campaign of “intimidation and corruption”, the petitioners alleged.


Updated

Here is Tessa Jowell, the former Labour minister and a favourite to get the Labour nomination for London mayor, on the Lutfur Rahman ruling.

Rahman ‘drove coach and horses’ through local authority law

This is what the Press Association has filed on the Lutfur Rahman case so far. It is written in a slightly odd way because the PA started filing before the judge had finished delivering his judgment.

A mayor accused of electoral fraud has been criticised by a judge following a high court hearing.

Four voters took legal action against Lutfur Rahman, independent mayor of Tower Hamlets in east London, at a hearing in the high court.

They asked election commissioner Richard Mawrey - who sat as a judge - to declare the result of the May 2014 mayoral election, which saw Rahman elected for a second term, void and order a re-run.

They also wanted Rahman to be barred from holding office for a period.

Today, Mawrey began outlining his conclusions after analysing evidence heard over several weeks at an election court trial in London earlier this year.

He said Rahman had been an “evasive” witness.

The four voters mounted a challenge under the provisions the Representation Of The People Act.

Lawyers for the group made a series of allegations, including “personation” in postal voting and at polling stations, and ballot paper tampering.

Rahman said there was “little, if any” evidence of wrongdoing against him.

His lawyers described the group of four’s claims as invention, exaggeration and “in some cases downright deliberately false allegations”.

Mawrey said Rahman had “driven a coach and horses” through local authority law and suggested that Rahman, who was born in Bangladesh, had played “race”and “religious” cards.

He said Rahman had been guilty of “corrupt practice”, which “extensively prevailed”.

Mawrey said the conduct of Rahman’s supporters on polling day has caused “considerable disquiet”.

Mawrey praised the four voters who had taken action and the barrister who represented them.

Mawrey said the mayoral election was “void”.

Rahman had ignored or flouted laws, said the judge.

Updated

Lutfur Rahman unseated as Tower Hamlets mayor after being found guilty of corrupt practices

Lutfur Rahman has been unseated as the independent mayor of Tower Hamlets after being found guilty of found guilty of corrupt and illegal practices.

Updated

Speaking on LBC, Nick Clegg was asked about the letter to the House of Lords signed by Labour peer Lord Janner, one week before the director of public prosecutions ruled that he was unfit to stand trial for child sex abuse allegations.

I’m sure people with dementia can sign letters. I’m not going to start making judgements about whether one signed letter in and of itself confounds the judgement the DPP has arrived at.

The deputy prime minister said that an independent inquiry into the decision might be appropriate.

If there could be a way in which this could be looked at again entirely independently, and there’s real integrity in that process, then I think that might be something that should be done.

He said that the director of public prosecutions needed to be able to make difficult decisions without “fear or favour”, but in this instance it was essential that people “understand fully and independently why such a highly controversial decision was arrived at”.

SNP's Swinney accepts IFS findings

John Swinney, Scotland’s deputy first minister and finance secretary, has told the Guardian he broadly accepts the IFS findings about the longer term implications of the SNP’s plans for 0.5% higher rate of public spending.

Swinney had not yet seen the details of the IFS analysis, so would not comment directly on its accusations of a “considerable disconnect” between SNP rhetoric on ending austerity and the finding that SNP plans meant a 4.3% cut in non-NHS and overseas aid spending.

But he said the SNP accepted that they would take longer than any other UK party to balance the books and get the public spending back into the black.

We acknowledge it will take us longer to get the public finances into surplus but we will do that by a process of investment, starting after the election and the election of SNP MPs will have that as their priority.

“Essentially, what we can say is with higher growth rates, there will be improvements in the performance of the public finances. Crucially, also, I would accept that it does take us longer to get the deficit down. Yes, I accept that it will have to be undertaken over more years than the other parties will propose but that’s because of the choice we’re putting to people, to bring austerity to an end at an earlier stage.

Updated

I’m sorry that the blog went quiet for a while. We had major problems with the website. But we seem to be back to normal again now.

IFS says SNP plans 'do not necessarily match their anti-austerity rhetoric'

And this is what the IFS is saying about the SNP.

  • The IFS says the SNP plans “do not necessarily match their anti-austerity rhetoric”.
  • It says that, although cuts would be less severe under the SNP, austerity would last longer.

They would cut less to start with but the implication of the plans they have spelt out in their manifesto is that the period of austerity would be longer than under the other three parties we consider.

Updated

IFS says Lib Dem plans reliant on 'highly uncertain' tax avoidance measures.

This is what the IFS is saying about Lib Dem plans.

  • The Institute for Fiscal Studies says the Lib Dem estimates of how much they could raise from tax avoidance and tax evasion measures are “highly uncertain” and much more optimistic than those of the other parties.

Their plans require real cuts to departmental spending of 3.4% between 2014–15 and 2017–18 (or 9.0% outside of the NHS, education and aid). This is predicated on their aspiration to raise 0.3% of national income (£7 billion) from highly uncertain measures to reduce tax avoidance and evasion by 2017–18. By the end of the parliament the Liberal Democrats claim to expect to raise £10 billion – twice as much as the Conservatives, and a third more than Labour, from such measures.

  • It says the Lib Dems have failed to explain how they would achieve much of their savings.

The Liberal Democrats are aiming for a tightening between that of Labour and the Conservatives. They have failed to spell out details of how they would achieve much of their tightening, relying heavily on unspecified measures to reduce tax avoidance and evasion (£7 billion) as well as some unspecified social security cuts (£2 billion).

Updated

IFS says Labour would only need 'relatively small cuts' to hit its borrowing targets

This is what the IFS is saying about the Labour plans.

  • The IFS says Labour would only need “relatively small cuts” to meet its borrowing targets.

It looks like Labour might need only relatively small cuts to departments other than aid, NHS and education spending – on top of the cuts already in place for 2015–16 – to bring about a balance on the current budget by 2018–19.

  • It says Labour has given more detail than the Tories about how it would achieve cuts, but less detail about when they want to clear the deficit.
  • It says that, although Labour has not given as firm a commitment to increasing NHS spending as the Tories, “in practice, it might not be surprising were they to deliver increases to NHS spending of at least that scale”.

Updated

Here is the IFS chart setting out the parties’ alternative spending plans.

IFS says Tories need to give 'substantially more detail' of how they would achieve cuts

This is what the IFS is saying about Conservative plans.

  • The IFS says the Tories have not given detail of how they will achieve cuts.

The Conservatives need to spell out substantially more detail of how they will deliver the overall fiscal targets they have set themselves.

  • It says the social security cuts the Tories have proposed only account for a tenth of the cuts they need from welfare.
  • It says, outside protected departments, the Tory plans would imply cuts of 17.9% in unprotected departments between 2014-15 and 2018-19, on top of the 18.1% cuts those departments have already experienced.

[This would lead to] a cumulative cut over the whole period from 2010-11 to 2018-19 of 32.8%). These ‘unprotected’ areas include defence, transport, law and order and social care.

Updated

IFS says debt would be higher under Labour

This is what the IFS says about the key differences between the Conservatives, Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP.

  • The IFS says all four parties plan further austerity.

All four parties’ plans imply further austerity over the next parliament. The Conservatives are planning a reduction in borrowing over the next parliament of 5.2% of national income, which would result in a surplus of 0.2% of national income by 2018–19. Labour have been less clear about their plans for borrowing, but their ambition to balance the current budget would be consistent with a smaller reduction in borrowing of 3.6% of national income, bringing it to 1.4% of national income by 2018–19. The Liberal Democrats are aiming for a borrowing reduction of 3.9%, to be achieved a year earlier (i.e. in 2017–18), while the SNP tax and spending plans imply a borrowing reduction of 3.6% of national income, but this would not be completed until 2019–20.

  • It says all parties are failing to give enough information about their plans.

Unfortunately, the electorate is at best armed with only an incomplete picture of what they can expect from any of these four parties.

  • It says the differences between the Conservatives on the one hand, and Labour and the SNP are “substantial”.
  • It says the various plans would reduce debt from between 72% of GDP to 78% of GDP.

Under the Conservative plans, debt as a share of national income could be reduced from 80% of national income in 2014–15 to 72% by 2019–20. Under Labour, Liberal Democrat and SNP plans, debt in 2019–20 could be more like 77%, 75% and 78% respectively.

  • It says the national debt would be higher under Labour. This would mean higher interest payments for the government which could potentially leave the government less well placed to deal with future adverse events.

Under the assumptions we have made, debt would be about £90 billion more in 2019–20 if Labour’s plans were implemented than if the Conservatives’ plans were implemented. Higher debt entails higher debt interest payments, and would potentially leave the government less well placed to deal with future adverse events.

Updated

IFS briefing on the election manifestos

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has just started its briefing on the election manifestos.

There is a live feed on the IFS website.

This is what has come out so far.

Updated

George Osborne has been visiting MIRA, a car technology company in Nuneaton. As Labour pointed out earlier (see 8.11am), George Gillespie, the MIRA chief executive, told the Today programme that Conservative policy on Europe was a threat to his business.

Gillespie said:

One of the reasons that MIRA has been very successful is that the UK is seen around the world as a good place to set up business, it has a very good legal system, we have reasonable employment laws, a good balance between employee and employer and we are a landing strip for Europe. If we cut ourselves from Europe all of a sudden that whole reason for coming to the UK starts to disappear and that makes that much more difficult to attract foreign investment in the UK ...

The perception around the world even as we discuss it now, before we even get to having a referendum and the consequences of that, I’m in China, I’m having to explain that no, the UK is not leaving Europe right now but even the discussion that are going on are already having ripple effects around the world. In terms of the perception that the UK is moving away from Europe.

Chris Leslie, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, has put out a statement saying it has been “an embarrassing start to the day for Osborne”.

Farage wins BBC ratings battle

Surprising news from the Guardian’s TV and broadcasting guru, John Plunkett: Nigel Farage’s interview with the BBC’s Evan Davis last night was the most watched of all the leaders’ interviews.

And, since George Osborne triggered a debate about what the markets think about the election, here’s the conclusion from a briefing prepared by UBS Wealth Management, a private bank, earlier this month. It said a minority government was the most likely outcome, and that both potential options had downsides for investors.

In our view, the greater concern for markets will be who leads a minority government. However, neither choice of leading party presents an ideal outcome for investors, as BREXIT concerns (Conservative) will be countered by worries about the outlook for fiscal policy (Labour).

UBS also expects the currency to fall in value under a Tory minority government or a Labour minority government.

This is what it expects to happen to the currency under a minority Conservative government.

The currency’s value should clearly decline to reflect the risk of extended policy uncertainty under minority rule. BREXIT fears will likely dominate investor thoughts in this scenario with a focus on the time line to such a referendum vote alongside the likelihood of the government recommending retained membership based on agreed reforms. Sterling remains at risk of further weakness against the US dollar. Further, a marginally sharper pace of austerity could dampen sentiment, prompting the BoE to remain on hold for longer and weakening sterling.

And this is what he expects to happen to the currency under a minority Labour government.

The currency’s value should clearly decline to reflect the risk of extended policy uncertainty under minority rule. BREXIT fears will certainly fade, but these could be replaced by concerns about overall fiscal credibility and devolution, especially if Labour relies on the SNP for informal support. Perception of looser fiscal policy, (beyond current spending) in 2016/17 could however be countered by a steeper path of interest rate rises which could offer some support to the currency.

So, whoever wins, your summer foreign holiday could get more expensive.

Markets 'relatively unruffled' by election uncertainty, says Citigroup

I’ve had a chance to look through the full Citigroup report that Labour flagged up earlier. (See 9.16am.) In its overall assessment it makes the point that, despite what “alarmist” newspaper headlines say, markets are not too worried about the election.

Markets have thus far been relatively unruffled at the prospect of political uncertainty, with 49% of investors surveyed (FT/Interactive Investor) indicating that they were not changing their portfolio ahead of the election, while 30.4% say they will wait until after the result.

Alarmist newspaper headlines aside, there has also been seemingly limited pre- election volatility in sterling with market impact being limited with only few signs of nerves. Whether this limited change in investor positioning reflects the high degree of uncertainty about which party will lead the next government, or a relaxed attitude by investors about the precise composition of government in a country experiencing relatively robust economic growth is unclear.

Is market ambivalence justified? Partly; in our view, the difference in terms of fiscal policy, and therefore implications for spending and GDP growth, is minimal between the two main parties. Although numerous Labour policies could have implications for businesses in certain sectors, party manifestos published last week do not suggest a large-scale shift, such as a change in corporation tax levels for example, that would undermine the investment environment (by prompting UK-listed companies to re-domicile).

Updated

On the Newsnight blog Duncan Weldon has posted a summary of what Morgan Stanley is saying about the implications of all the possible election results.

As Weldon says, Morgan Stanley has identified three possible outcomes, and thinks all of them could have a “negative” outcome on the economy. But not that negative.

But before we get carried with gloom, it’s worth noting that they add: “Nonetheless, across all scenarios, we see growth continuing at around 2% in 2015-16, and the deficit more than halving over the next Parliament.”

In other words, whoever forms a government, Morgan Stanley don’t see the UK recovery being derailed.

Alex Salmond interviewed on Good Morning Scotland

Alex Salmond has been on the radio, where he again dismissed David Cameron’s “po-faced response” to his joke about writing Labour’s budget and dismissed any threats to his own campaign chances from tactical voting.

“It was a joke and it was taken as such,” said the former SNP leader and candidate for the constituency of Gordon in Aberdeenshire. “The difference is that people laugh as my jokes... while people laugh at his cabinet ministers.”

Questioned about George Osborne’s criticisms of SNP economic plans, he said: “I think that the vast majority of people in Scotland think it’s a good thing to move away from austerity. I think many millions of people across these islands, in England and Wales, think it’s a good thing as well, which is why Nicola Sturgeon topped two television debates not just in Scotland but across the UK. Many, many people are looking for an alternative to Tory/Liberal economics.”

Salmond was being interviewed as part of a piece from the Gordon constituency, where Nick Clegg recently advocated tactical voting. Salmond said that the threat didn’t trouble him: “People vote in the north-east of Scotland for parties on a positive platform, for what they can do for their constituency first and then what they can do for the country.

“This negative stuff is not going to cut any ice and of course it’s self-defeating because the same campaign in the neighbouring constituency of West Aberdeenshire is advocating voting to unseat the sitting Liberal Democrat member of parliament. Do they think people in west Aberdeenshire don’t talk to people in Gordon? Those who live by tactical voting die by tactical voting.”

Updated

Labour has sent me some alternative quotes about what the markets think about a Labour victory. They are from an election briefing from Citigroup, the global bank.

  • Citigroup says the markets are relaxed about uncertainty.

But markets appear relaxed about UK political uncertainty. We argue that there is less to fear from a minority government than in the past: given limited fiscal policy divergence between the main parties, our economic forecasts are unlikely to change.

  • It says a minority Labour government would not be a risk.

Is a Labour minority government riskier than a Labour majority? In practice, however, we suspect that a Labour-led minority government would be able to implement the modest fiscal tightening needed to meet the CBR targets. The fiscal position is likely to continue undershooting official forecasts, and the recent budget plans aim to massively over-achieve versus the CBR targets. Moreover, Labour’s fiscal plans include tax hikes (top tax rate, mansion tax, bank bonus tax) that have little direct impact on Scotland. As a result, a Labour-led government could add significantly to planned public spending – assuaging the SNP’s concerns -- while still meeting the CBR targets.

  • It says a Conservative majority government would be more dangerous than a Conservative minority government.

Conservative-led minority government may be less risky than a majority one. A Conservative-led majority government would raise Brexit risk, because it would be committed to hold an EU referendum by the end of 2017 (and a commitment to agree such a referendum would surely be a necessary condition for a renewal of the current Cons/LD coalition). We believe that Brexit (if it happens) would be highly damaging for the UK economy, given the UK’s major role as a hub for global businesses that export to other EU countries.

Warnings from investors and analysts cited by the Tories

The Conservatives have sent me a five-page briefing note with a string of quotes from investors and financial experts warning about the market implications of the election leading to a minority Labour government. Here are the key ones, which George Osborne was referring to on Today. (See 8.43am.)

Obviously, these are selective quotes. Investors are also hugely worried about the impact of the EU referendum that the Conservatives are proposing but that Labour is opposing. I will post more on that later.

But here are the pro-Tory quotes.

From Anthony O’Brien, a Morgan Stanley analyst, in a briefing UK Economics and Strategy

A Labour-led government supported by the SNP would likely lead to a marked selloff in gilts, in our view. We would expect uncertainty as to just how anti-austerity and how interventionist the government would be. The topic of a renewed referendum on independence for Scotland would also hang in the air. Investors may well think the MPC could hike sooner, as the current trade-off between austerity and loose monetary policy would be challenged.

From a Goldman Sachs election briefing

Sterling is the asset that appears most at risk from a ‘market-unfriendly’ election outcome, although FX volatility markets have already priced in a significant degree of election risk. Concerns over budgetary discipline, if left unchecked, could lead to a rise in Gilt yields.

From Jeremy Stretch, currency strategist at the Canadian bank CIBC

We’ve seen so much uncertainty on the markets already. The fear will be that a Labour government supported by the SNP spend more and do less to tackle the deficit. That will have implications for the bond markets and could force the Bank of England to tighten policy. So we could have a scenario, a dangerous cocktail, where taxes are going up, spending is going up, and interest rates are going up.

From a Deutsche Bank election briefing

The SNP could encourage Labour to move further to the left in government. The result would be increased taxes … and likely a slower reduction in the deficit. One consequence could be higher short- and longer-term interest rates as markets reassess the UK’s willingness to accumulate sovereign debt, and the Bank of England responds to higher near-term growth thanks to stronger government spending.

From a BlackRock briefing

A weak minority/coalition government (or a government that drifts from fiscal pledges) may lead the bond market to question the speed of falling gilt supply. Issuance expectations could rise moderately, leading buyers to demand higher risk premia on long-dated bonds.

My colleague Frances Perraudin has sent this report with more detail of the Liberal Democrats’ care policy announcement this morning, a key plank of the party’s “disability manifesto”:

Nick Clegg is in Brecon and Radnorshire today, to launch his party’s disability manifesto. A highlight of the document is a commitment to provide £150m for Britain’s 6.5m carers who look after older, disabled or seriously ill family members.

Under the party’s plans carers would receive a £250 bonus to ease the cost of looking after family members who need support for 35 hours or more each week over a 12 month period.

NHS staff would also be required to identify carers who could qualify for a new “carer’s passport”, which would give them access to a range of benefits from free hospital parking, to free cinema tickets, free restaurant meals, and free gym sessions.

The Liberal Democrats also propose that carers be entitled to an additional five days additional paid “care leave” a year, and that they be able to earn up to £150 per week, instead of the current £110 per week, before losing their carers allowance.

Clegg will say that one in eight adults acts as a carer for a loved one and will describe them as the “unsung heroes of British society.”

Updated

George Osborne says global investors claim Labour win could lead to higher interest rates

That was not a particularly revealing interview, but George Osborne did use it to unleash a new attack on Labour. Here are the key points.

  • Osborne said some of the world’s leading investors have warned that the election of a minority Labour government dependent on the SNP could lead to economic instability and higher interest rates.

I have got in front of me a whole list of international investors and observers of the British economy who now warn that this unstable combination will lead to higher market interest rates, which means higher mortgage rates for families, which means higher bills, cut incomes, it means businesses finding it more difficult to expand ...

Let’s take one of Canada’s largest banks, CIBC. They say a Labour government supported by the SNP would lead to a dangerous cocktail where taxes are going up, spending is going up, interest rates are going up. They have been joined by Morgan Stanley, the US investment bank, BlackRock, which is the largest pension fund in the world, Deutsche Bank, the largest German banks. These are pretty unsentimental people. These are economists and investors who make a living predicting what is going to happen to different economies around the world. And this week they have come out in a chorus to point out the consequences for the UK of departing from the economic plan we’ve pursued.

But it is worth pointing out that Osborne is being selective.

This is from Duncan Weldon, Newsnight’s economics correspondent.

And this is from Andrew Clark, the Times’ deputy business editor.

And the Guardian’s Michael White has a good point too.

Updated

Osborne says the alternative to a Conservative government is what Gordon Brown described as “constitutional chaos”.

Humphrys says that, after the leaders’ debate, Osborne was the person who went into the spin room saying Nicola Sturgeon did well.

Q: Earlier we spoke to the boss of a company here who said he was very worried about the EU referendum. He said a Chinese contact thought the UK was leaving the EU.

Osborne says the Tories want to be in Europe, not run by Europe.

Q: Marks out of 10 for your election campaign?

Osborne says he is confident it is going well.

And that’s it. The interview is over.

I’ll post a summary shortly.

Q: You are in charge of the Tory election campaign. You cannot be pleased with how it is going?

Osborne says he does not accept that.

Q: You have had good economic news. Yet the polls aren’t shifting, and you seem to think the SNP will end up running the country.

Osborne says it was always going to be close. He agrees with what Gordon Brown said last night about the constitutional chaos the SNP would bring.

Q: I have been going round the county a lot. No one mentions the SNP on the doorstep. But people do say they don’t like the way politicians bash each other. And you have been doing lots of that.

Osborne says most of the Tory campaign has been positive. Today the party is setting out the impact of its plans in the regions.

Having a minority Labour government dependent on the SNP would lead to great instability. He says he has a list of companies in front of him saying this sort of instability could lead to higher interest rates.

Q: Give an example.

Osborne quotes a Canadian bank, and some other companies. They are not sentimental or political, he says.

Q: You say the SNP would put the economic recovery at risk. You are crying wolf, aren’t you?

No, says Osborne. There is a very clear choice. We can either get back to work with the Tories, or have a Miliband government that will borrow more. That will lead to higher mortgage rates.

Q: You said the same about Alistair Darling in 2010. But this did not happen.

Osborne says he does not accept that. There was a real risk in 2010, he says.

Q: There are more jobs now than at the start of the great crisis. But we are less productive than we were then. What are they all doing?

They are listening to this programme, preparing to go to work, and working hard, says Osborne.

A combination of Ed Miliband and the SNP would be deeply unstable, he says.

We should not put all our bets on the City of London again.

John Humphrys says they are in a technology park in Nuneaton.

Labour says George Osborne came to the wrong place.

George Osborne's Today interview

Good morning. I’m taking over from Mark.

John Humphrys is about to interview George Osborne, the Conservative chancellor, on the Today programme. They are in Nuneaton.

I hope Osborne makes a better impression on the local media in Nuneaton than he did when he went to Bury yesterday. This account, from the Manchester Evening News’s Jennifer Williams, is fairly damning.

Updated

Verdict expected in Tower Hamlets electoral fraud case

Not strictly campaign news, but it’s a big day for politics in east London today, with a high court verdict due in the case of Lutfur Rahman, the Tower Hamlets mayor who is accused of electoral fraud.

Four voters asked election commissioner Richard Mawrey - who sat as a judge - to declare the result of the May 2014 mayoral election, which saw Rahman elected for a second term as an independent, void and order a re-run. They also want Rahman barred from office.

Mawrey is due to deliver a ruling today after analysing evidence over several weeks at an election court trial in London earlier this year.

The four voters mounted a challenge under the provisions of the Representation Of The People Act. Lawyers for the group made a series of allegations, including “personation” in postal voting and at polling stations, and ballot paper tampering.

Rahman said there was “little, if any” evidence of wrongdoing against him. His lawyers described the claims as invention, exaggeration and “in some cases downright deliberately false allegations”.

The latest in the Guardian’s long reads series on the UK’s party leaders is Ian Jack’s brilliant profile of Nicola Sturgeon. Here’s a snippet of some of the fascinating in-depth biographical detail:

Aged 17, Sturgeon was appointed to the executive of the party’s youth wing, the Young Scottish Nationalists. A year later and by now a law student at Glasgow University, she made an early appearance in the media (in fact, in this newspaper) as a critic of the poll tax, which she cited as an example of “how the Scottish people have been disenfranchised”. Active in student politics, she helped the Hue and Cry singer and nationalist Pat Kane get elected as university rector. And then, crucially for her personal history, she got to know Alex Salmond during his campaign to win the SNP leadership in 1990, when she played a leading role in the “Youth for Salmond” campaign. “A formidable operator,” was how Kathleen Caskie, then working at the SNP’s headquarters, remembered her last year to the Guardian’s Libby Brooks. “Suddenly there were all these young people wearing Salmond T-shirts – the party was still at 15% [in the polls] and nobody had ever seen that level of organisation for an internal campaign before. That was the stage that her relationship with him cemented.”

Updated

The Guardian’s Scotland reporter Libby Brooks has sent me this on how the campaign in Scotland looks to be panning out today:

Jim Murphy is back on his Irn Bru crates, in spirit at least (a Labour source tells me that there will be some sort of mobile podium but not necessarily branded with Scotland’s favourite fizzy drink, as was Murphy’s wont during the referendum campaign when he famously toured the country on a pro-union speaking tour).

Murphy will be holding a street rally in Edinburgh, and will return to two key Labour themes this week: that David Cameron is “playing with fire” by talking up the SNP in an attempt to win votes in England, while the SNP’s flagship policy of full fiscal responsibility would lead to “eye watering cuts that would see the end of the UK state pension in Scotland and put the NHS at risk”.

Gordon Brown has also written a letter to 350,000 households in Scotland setting out Labour’s plan to invest in the NHS and again warning of the “devastating” impact that full fiscal autonomy would have on the health service.

I’ve received one myself, and can confirm that - while it’s not written in capital letters, a familiar Brown quirk - it does come signed with his very recognisable scrawl. Political observers have been asking for weeks now “when is Gordon Brown going to come and save the election, like he saved the union?” I’m guessing this won’t be the sum total of his intervention, but time is running short.

At 9.45am, also in Edinburgh, deputy first minister John Swinney will be speaking to voters at an Edinburgh cafe, and arguing that the SNP “is the only party offering an alternative to the Westminster cuts agenda”.

The Lib Dems are campaigning on childcare in Argyll and Bute and the Tories are also in Edinburgh, with Ruth Davidson talking up more powers for the Scottish parliament (though I’ll be interested to see how she squares that with David Cameron’s comments today).

Morning briefing

Good morning and welcome to another all-day election chronicle. Today is St George’s Day, the annual celebration of England’s patron saint. Festivities are typically more muted than the national days allotted to the other home nations, but perhaps election fever could change this; there’s been enough Little Englandism around in the campaign coverage so far.

I’m Mark Smith, getting things going before blogmaster Andrew Sparrow takes us through the meat of the day, while Nadia Khomami will see you through until you’re ready for your bedtime cocoa. Let us know your thoughts, whether in the comments below or via Twitter: @marksmith174, @andrewsparrow and @nadiakhomami.

The big picture

Today’s campaigning will return to the big beast of election issues: the economy. We saw some opening salvos in the first week of the campaign, before it was dragged down into a wrestling match over the level of danger supposedly posed by Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP. But today independent analysts the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) will publish its forensic assessment of the economic policies of the four largest parties: Labour, the Conservatives, the Lib Dems and the SNP.

The IFS verdict is unlikely to settle decisively the most contested issue in the campaign, but such an independent verdict on each parties’ policies gives the media the opportunity to report a bit of light rather than heat. So expect the IFS documents to be pored over by partisans looking for that choice sentence or phrase which, taken out of context, can be blown up to provide decisive proof of their side’s unimpeachable rectitude, or their opponents’ proposed lurch toward fiscal catastrophe.

The tone for early jousts between Labour and the Tories has been set by chancellor George Osborne’s interview in the Daily Telegraph in which he renews attacks on Labour over the possibility of the party being supported in government by the SNP. Osborne cites a Treasury estimate of the SNP’s spending plans that said they would trigger an extra £6bn in debt interest payments. “There’s a real cost for families,” Osborne writes, “equivalent to just over £350 per family”. Labour has called the chancellor’s comments “ludicrous” and said they were “based on old figures”. Ed Miliband will counter today by saying that the Tories are planning “the biggest cuts anywhere in the developed world”.

Here’s what else is around this morning:

Today’s diary

Here’s some of the main things we’ll be keeping an eye on today:

  • 7.30am: Danny Alexander is campaigning for the Lib Dems in Aberdeen
  • 8.10am George Osborne is the Today programme’s 8.10 interviewee before making economic speech in West Yorkshire
  • 8.30am: Ukip’s Peter Whittle and Patrick O’Flynn hold presser in central London
  • 9am: Nick Clegg is on LBC’s Call Clegg radio show
  • 9.30am: Public sector borrowing figures released by the ONS
  • 9.45am: The SNP’s John Swinney will be campaigning in an Edinburgh cafe
  • 10am: The IFS publishes its analysis of the main parties’ public finance plans
  • 11am: Jim Murphy leads street rally for Scottish Labour in Edinburgh
  • Morning: David Cameron addressing a campaign audience in Cornwall

We’ll obviously keep you abreast of any other major events that crop up.

Reading list

In the absence of honesty in the funding debate it is easy to fall back into pessimism. It’s a black hole, we can never afford to, let’s ditch the NHS and start again etc. But the NHS is not popular in Britain because the British are mad but because it is readily understood and represents a social solidarity and pooled risk that citizens actively endorse. Whichever system you chose you’d still have to pay more for it. But you really ought to say how.

  • Continuing the theme of honesty (I’m spotting a pattern here), James Bloodworth on Left Foot Forward argues that politicians left are tying themselves in knots over progressive taxation:

Because politicians won’t talk openly about tax, the case for progressive taxation is never made. The current General Election campaign is a case in point. Because politicians refuse to publicly countenance any increase in income tax, the focus is always on which government departments the next government will slash and by how much.

Not only is this a huge concession to the right (income tax is bad whereas cutting is good) but it also risks leaving politicians open to accusations of breaking their promises if taxes do rise (which they will if the next government is to meet bourgeoning NHS and pension costs). Broken promises also lead to a further diminishment of public trust in politicians.

In recoiling from the dreaded T word, politicians are behaving like it is 1992. Meanwhile the public have moved on, and I suspect they might like a bit of honesty on tax, even if it hasn’t always worked out well in the past.

Is it any wonder that Nicola Sturgeon has caught the public’s attention since she is the only party leader openly discussing where she might find common agreement with another party? It may be a clever and strategic ploy on her part to wind up her opponents, but it plays well because it’s so radically contrasted with every other main party leader.

These more conventional figures are effectively saying, my party is the only one who’ll get you out of this mess and you’d be an idiot not to vote for it.

If today were a song …

… it would be Pink Floyd’s Money. “Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash”.

Non-election news story of the day

Yes, Tisdale, I think it’s time.

Updated

 

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