Election 2015: Leaked documents reveal Tory benefit cut options – as it happened

According to the Mirror, Ed Miliband was “punched and shoved” by a small group of protesters yesterday at noon, before last night’s showdown with David Cameron.

UPDATE AT 12.37PM: Earlier I said the incident happened after the TV showdown. I’ve changed that because it reportedly happened at noon, before the TV event.

Good morning. I’m taking over now from Claire.

Lucy Powell, vice chair of Labour’s election campaign, has also been giving interviews this morning about last night’s not-quite-a-debate. She said people got the chance to see the real Ed Miliband.

What you saw last night is for the first time, the public got to see the real Ed Miliband – Ed Miliband unmediated by sections of the press who are out to get him and want to portray him as something that he isn’t. Last night was an opportunity for the public to see the real Ed Miliband and they liked that Ed Miliband and he came across much more strongly than David Cameron and I think he proved a lot of people wrong last night.

She also said that people were tired of questions about Miliband’s decision to stand against his brother in 2010.

She said people were growing tired of constant questions about Mr Miliband’s decision to stand against his brother for the Labour leadership in 2010.

But even people who should know better can’t get David Miliband out of their heads.

Douglas Alexander:

I think it [the interview] will have begun a process of reappraisal.

It’s clearer why Lynton Crosby wanted to avoid a head-to-head debate between the two leaders, he adds.

I think that speaks volumes … He’s run a mile from that debate.

Labour election campaign chief Douglas Alexander is on now. He says Miliband had not practised the “hell yes, I’m tough enough” line. He was just answering the question, Alexander says.

Tory party chairman Grant Shapps is on the Today programme now.

He says David Cameron last night sounded like a man with a plan for the country.

The polls said Cameron won the contest, he says.

If Labour is elected, if Ed Miliband is prime minister, I think it would be pretty chaotic.

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister and SNP leader, has just been interviewed by John Humphrys on the Today programme.

Quizzed on Alex Salmond’s recent comments that the party could “lock out” the Tories from forming a government after 7 May, she said:

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We would in no circumstances support a Conservative government.

It’s a matter of simple arithmetic: if there are more anti-Tory MPs then we can lock the Tories out of government.

If the Tories can’t command a majority, they don’t deserve to form a government.

She denies Humphrys’ suggestion that this is “breathtakingly arrogant”.

She added that her party was “unlikely” to form a coalition with Labour – something that Ed Miliband has also ruled out:

Of course he’s not going to say that [that Labour would work with the SNP] this side of an election.

He’s clinging to pretence he’s got some chance of winning a majority when everyone know that’s not going to happen.

But Sturgeon repeated that the SNP would be prepared to support a minority Labour government on a vote-by-vote basis. Her party, she pointed out, is experienced in the realities of minority government in Scotland.

You might have the power to bring down or prevent the formation of a Labour government, Humphrys puts to her:

We can beat them issue by issue … We would use our influence to try to pursue an alternative to austerity, the end of Trident … that’s the way minority government works.

Scotland is usually ignored in Westminster, Sturgeon adds:

If people choose to vote SNP, they’ll make sure Scotland’s voice is heard in Westminster.

She adds that she believes SNP policies would win support in England as well as Scotland.

And on the inevitable question of another independence referendum:

We’re not goiong to get another referendum by voting SNP in the general election …

It will be determined by the people of Scotland in the normal way.

It seems Grant Shapps will be making an appearance on the Today programme at around 8.20am to discuss the fallout from last night’s TV interviews.

The Tory party chairman has been keeping quite a low profile following Guardian revelations about his second life as millionaire online marketing expert Michael Green.

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Ed Miliband – who, despite what many watchers thought was a creditable performance last night, did not topple Cameron in the post-interview polling – will be looking to bounce back this morning. Political editor Patrick Wintour sends this report:

Ed Miliband will launch his party’s election campaign this morning at the Olympic Park in East London with a promise he will fight an election campaign suffused with optimism and determined to show that Britain can do better. He will repeatedly claim Labour are the optimists and the Tories the pessimists.

The Labour leader will insist the spirit of optimism will be at the heart of a campaign intended to get the party back into Downing Street after five years in opposition.

Referring to the Tories he will claim:

Five million people paid less than the living wage. They say: this is as good as it gets. We say: Britain can do better than this.

You can read the full report here.

A quick sweep-up of the day’s other business:

The big picture

• William Hague, the outgoing leader of the house, suffered a humiliating rebuff on the final day of his parliamentary career when a Tory backbench rebellion saw off an attempt to secure the ousting of the Speaker, John Bercow. A motion to ensure there was a secret ballot to elect the Speaker in the next parliament was defeated by 228 to 202.

• Labour will make important gains in London in the general election, according to a Guardian/ICM telephone poll. The party is set to advance by five percentage points to reach 42% – a full 10 points ahead of the Tories, who fall back 3 points from their 2010 result to 32%.
• David Cameron has asked the Queen to summon the new parliament to meet on Monday 18 May, suggesting he expects a new government to be in place by then, 11 days after polling day. The state opening of parliament, and the Queen’s Speech, has been set for Wednesday 27 May.

You can catch up with yesterday’s politics news on Thursday’s live blog here.

And here’s our regular update on the latest polling figures:

Diary

• Nicola Sturgeon is on Radio 4’s Today programme at 7.50am.
• This morning sees the official launch of the Labour election campaign.
• The Guardian’s latest Battleground Britain profile comes from Ealing Central. Read previous dispatches from Glasgow East, South Thanet, Taunton Deane and Dewsbury.

Read these

I’ll do a round-up of CamvMili columns and comments soon. Here is a taster of the other reads out there this morning:

• In the Times, Philip Collins analyses the fallout from yesterday’s supreme court ruling – in a case long-fought by the Guardian – that letters from Prince Charles to ministers should be published:

We can be categorical about this. Charles has absolutely no right to do any of this. It is an empty platitude, often heard, that Charles has as much right to his opinion as anyone else. So he does, but not everyone has an open line to ministers and his use of it explodes any notion that these letters are ‘private’ …

If he wants to be a private citizen, with the protection of privacy which is due, he knows what to do. Then, having abdicated, he is free to scribble spiders all day long and we’ll see how many of them get answered.

• A Guardian editorial on the same theme concludes:

If it is accepted that the head of state is going to have opinions, and perhaps give them an airing for time to time, then – for a newspaper of principled republicanism, at least – the answer is clear. Not any longer to allow the job to be filled by accident of birth, but instead to select for the post by democratic means.

Perhaps that is a discussion for another day. But after Thursday’s ruling, the immediate point is simply that mail that comes on his majesty’s service must no longer be kept from his majesty’s subjects.

• And Peter Franklin over at ConservativeHome poses a heretical thought: that politicians need a bit more downtime:

The reality is that most MPs – and especially those in ministerial and leadership positions – have punishing schedules …

The real question is this: Do we want the people making important decisions on our behalf to be well-rested and clear-minded, or should we keep them sick, stressed-out and exhausted?

The day in a tweet

Commons hero of the day

Charles Walker, the chairman of the procedure committee, which first called for the matter of the vote for the Speaker to be debated more than two years ago. Yesterday, as Patrick Wintour reports, Walker brought Labour MPs to their feet in applause with his speech in the Commons as MPs debated a last-minute attempt to change the rules:

I have been played as a fool and when I go home tonight I will look in the mirror and see an honourable fool looking back at me, and I would much rather be an honourable fool in this, and any other matter, than a clever man.

How you treat people in this place is important. This week I went to the leader of the house’s leaving drinks. I went into his private office and was passed by the deputy leader of house yesterday, all of whom would have been aware of what they were proposing to do.

I also had a number of friendly chats with our chief whip yesterday and yet I found out last night that this leader of the house is bringing forward my report.

If today were a movie franchise, it would be…

The Hangover (part one).

The key story you’re missing when you’re election-obsessed

In Italy, a panel of judges will finally determine today whether it finds Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito guilty of the murder of British university student Meredith Kercher in Perugia in 2007.

A two-part briefing this morning, as we first digest last night’s interviews, before turning to a light breakfast of the day’s other politics news.

Good morning and welcome to day five of the Guardian’s election live blogs. I’m Claire Phipps and I’ll be steering the blog this morning before handing over to Andrew Sparrow. As always, I’m on Twitter @Claire_Phipps and also checking out your comments below the line.

For those who missed last night’s interviews – or those who just want more of it, or whose attention might have wandered a little halfway through – here’s a rundown of the key bits:

How they scored

In the polls immediately after the interviews, David Cameron came out on top.

A Guardian/ICM poll of 1,123 viewers taken directly after the questions to both men gave the prime minister an eight-point advantage, by 54% to 46%.

A YouGov app poll for the Times put things rather closer, with 51% saying Cameron was the winner, against 49% for Ed Miliband.

Twitter came up with a different verdict again, with Miliband attracting more positive reactions – but with only a fraction of the tweets seen about Cameron:

Guardian commentators’ verdicts: in a word

• Polly Toynbee: Cameron = dull; Miliband = human; Paxman = rude; Burley = impatient.
  
• Jonathan Freedland: Cameron = rattled; Miliband = assertive; Paxman = withering.
  
• Matthew D’Ancona: Cameron = wooden; Miliband = tetchy; Paxman = grudging.
  
• Hugh Muir: Cameron = supplicant; Miliband = hardened; Paxman = acid.
  
• Gaby Hinsliff: Cameron = miserable; Miliband = punk; Paxman = sadistic; Burley = cooed.
  
• Aditya Chakrabortty: Cameron = burbled; Miliband = regrets; Paxman = incisors.
  

If, for some reason, you’d like to read more than just one word about the combatants, you can see the full verdicts here.

David Cameron: what we found out

1. He thinks food bank usage has gone up since 2010 because the previous Labour government didn’t let jobcentres advertise their existence.
2. He couldn’t live on a zero-hours contract.
3. He thinks questions about his rich friends (and the jobs he gave to some of them) were “ridiculous”.
4. He accepts he has failed to meet the pledge to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands.
5. He says he had to raise VAT in 2010, despite saying he wouldn’t, because the economy was in a bigger mess than he’d expected when he took over at No 10.
6. He says it were not in Britain’s interests, he would not recommend staying in the EU come a referendum.
7. He does not think Uncle Tom Cobley is his likely successor.
8. He shouldn’t have called Ed Miliband despicable, but wah, he started it.
9. He didn’t want to make cuts, but there are lots more coming.
10. He still loves the NHS. But he likes private companies too.

Ed Miliband: what we found out

1. He says leaving the EU would be a disaster, so there’s no need for a referendum.
   
2. His mum is pretty tough, even when her two sons were “bruising” each other.
3. He thinks Cameron got it right on equal marriage and overseas aid spending.
4. He accepts Labour got it wrong on the banks, and Ed Balls definitely thinks so too.
5. Oh, and they also got it wrong on immigration.
6. What was that millennium dome all about, eh?
7. He would cut the winter fuel allowance for wealthy pensioners.
8. Not all the mansion tax money will go to Scotland. Some will go to Newcastle.
9. He won’t need to negotiate with Alex Salmond, because Labour will win a majority.
10. HELL YES, he is tough enough for No 10.

And what we never quite found out

Here’s a neat round-up of the questions that Cameron didn’t really know how to answer:

Whereas Ed Miliband really, really wanted the opportunity to explain:

The #notadebate in tweets

Because we don’t know anything until we know what Twitter thinks.

Labour probably won’t mind this one:

This one’s a bit more uncomfortable for Miliband:

And this one will have ruined Ed’s night:

The Ukip leader said he would rate Miliband as 7 out of 10, with Cameron on a measly four.

Jeremy Paxman’s best faces

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How the two leaders would cope with the onslaught from a Paxman who’d been out of the cut-and-thrust of political interviewing for a while was always – in the absence of a genuine head-to-head between Cameron and Miliband – going to be the real test.

“Cameron’s most uncomfortable 20 minutes in an interview for ages,” was my colleague Andrew Sparrow’s analysis last night.

The Labour leader was generally thought to have put up a punchy defence. But for Stuart Heritage, there was one runaway winner:

If the people of Britain were allowed to go to the polls immediately after Cameron & Miliband: the Battle for Number 10, there’d a landslide. And our new prime minister would be Jeremy Paxman.

This was a man who’d clearly been straining at the leash since he left Newsnight; a man who’d spent too many months trapped indoors, fruitlessly barking questions at potplants.

John Crace agreed, pointing out: “If Paxo was a closet Tory, he was keeping it well hidden”:

Don’t Jeremy me,’ Jeremy salivated, while giving his trademark thousand-yard death stare. God, he had missed this. So had we.

‘Could you live on a zero-hours contract?’ Paxman demanded. ‘That’s not the question,’ Dave simpered. It was, though, and Paxman asked it again. And again.

By the end, Dave couldn’t even remember his own name, let alone any of the key economic statistics. Did he know how much the country was borrowing? ‘No, but I’m sure you will tell me, Daddy,’ Dave mumbled.

‘I don’t want to sound rude,’ Paxo lied. ‘You’ve failed.’ It was all Dave could do to stop himself from nodding.

Question of the night

“Are you ok, Ed?” (Spoiler alert: he’s ok. They’re both ok. Everyone is ok.)