Election 2015 live: HSBC threat to leave UK shows danger of Tory re-election, says Labour

Here are today’s YouGov GB polling figures. They give Labour a 2-point lead.

Last night a ComRes poll gave the Tories a 4-point lead.

But a Survation poll gave Labour a 4-point lead.

And here is more from what Douglas Alexander, the shadow foreign secretary, said on the Today programme earlier (see 7.52am) about how the Conservative complaints about Ed Miliband’s speech amounted to a “manufactured row”.

Let me tell you what the speech actually says. The speech rightly highlights the loss of British influence that David Cameron has overseen and also highlights the very widely accepted failures on Libya where the international community, rightly I believe, took action to prevent Benghazi being turned into a slaughter house but then has abjectly failed to engage in effective post conflict planning. I think that is widely understood and widely recognised.

I do think David Cameron waded in and then walked away. What we have seen since 2011 is five different Libyan governments. I think there was an opportunity with the establishment of the National Transitional Council for the international community to get around the National Transitional Council and provide better support. We are now in a situation where we have got two rival governments, one in Tripoli, one in Tobruk, and in the first democratic elections, remember back in July 2012, the Islamists only actually won in 19 out of 80 seats. This was not inevitable ...

It is a failure of post-conflict planning for which the international community bears responsibility. That’s not a matter of dispute, it’s a matter of fact.

24 Apr 201503.22 EDT

Andrew Sparrow

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

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As Peter reported earlier, Liz Truss, the Conservative environment secretary, said that Ed Miliband’s comments about David Cameron bearing some responsibility for the death of migrants in the Mediterranean were “outrageous and disgraceful”. (See 7.25am.) Here are more quotes from what she told the Today programme.

It is absolutely offensive that Ed Miliband should be suggesting that David Cameron is directly responsible for those deaths which is what he appears to be suggesting in his speech.

When it was put to her that Miliband was only saying that Cameron was indirectly responsible for the situation in the Mediterranean, she replied:

I understand that what he is saying in the speech is more direct than that. I think that’s offensive in the course of an election campaign to use that type of terminology ... To bring this into an election campaign is outrageous and disgraceful. Actually accusing the prime minister of causing those deaths, whether directly or indirectly, I think is wrong of Ed Miliband to bring that in. I absolutely think he should withdraw it ...

My fear is Ed Miliband feels like he’s losing the argument and he’s lashing out and accusing the prime minister, essentially, of causing deaths, rather than addressing the issues in this campaign.

As Labour and the Tories bicker, the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon is getting down to work, notes my colleague in Scotland, Libby Brooks.

Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, who is gradually returning to work after surgery for cancer, suggests the row over Miliband’s speech might be more prompted by Labour’s briefing notes for journalists about the speech as by the speech itself.

Douglas Alexander, Labour’s shadow foreign secretary, has just been on the Today programme dismissing the Conservative complaints about Ed Miliband’s foreign policy speech as “a manufactured row”.

While blaming Cameron for some failures over Libya – “I do think David Cameron waded in and walked away,” he said – Alexander stressed any direct blame for the recent deaths of hundreds of migrants drowned while trying to cross the Mediterranean was down to a wider failure of the international community to stop Libya slipping into chaos after the end of Muammar Gaddafi’s rule, saying:

It is a failure of post-conflict planning for which the international community bears responsibility. That’s not a matter of dispute, it’s a matter of fact.

Insisting Miliband was serious about foreign policy, despite his relative lack of talk about it before now, Alexander said the Conservative policy that distance from the EU would bring more influence in Washington was “a fantasy of euroscepticism”

24 Apr 201502.44 EDT

Poll shows Farage on course to win Kent seat

Jessica Elgot

My colleague Jessica Elgot has filed this on good news for the Ukip leader:

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Nigel Farage has pulled away from his rivals to be the favourite to win Thanet South, according to a new poll.

Previous polls had suggested the Ukip leader would have to redouble his efforts to win a seat in parliament, with one survey by Conservative peer Lord Ashcroft in November showing him behind the Tories by five points.

But today’s Survation survey, which was commissioned by Ukip donor Alan Brown, found Farage had 39% support in the constituency, far out polling his Conservative rival Craig Mackinlay who is on 30%.

“I’ve said all along we are confident but not complacent, but I now feel much more confident,” Farage told the Telegraph.

The Ukip leader has devoted a considerable amount of his efforts to making inroads locally, with the new poll suggesting that more constituents had received a phonecall, leaflet or personal visit than from either the Tories or Labour.

Around 18% of the respondents said they had met Farage in the past month, compared to 8% who had met Labour’s Will Scobie, and 7% who said they had met MacKinlay.

Comedian Al Murray’s pub landlord seems to be making little impact, with all the minor parties in the constituency polling a combined 3%, with the Liberal Democrats polling just 2% and on course to lose their election deposit.

Survation interviewed 1,057 residents of the South Thanet constituency on 22 April.

Liz Truss, until the election the Conservatives’ environment secretary, has just been on the Today programme, She was first asked about Ed Miliband’s comments about Libya and migrants (see below), calling them “outrageous and disgraceful”. She said:

Actually accusing the prime minister of causing these deaths - whether directly or indirectly - I think is wrong.

The bulk of the chat was about the details of the England manifesto, about which, it had to be said, Truss sounded slightly uncertain at times. The general gist of the idea, she explained, is that while legislation would be drafted across the whole House of Commons, when measures affected just England, English MPs would get their own, separate vote on this (or English and Welsh MPs when it affects both countries).

This was “preserving the integrity of the union”, Truss insisted, while allowing English MPs a veto on measures affecting just England:

It is a hybrid solution – we’re not proposing an English parliament with completely separate decision making.

A row is brewing over Ed Miliband’s upcoming speech on foreign policy: the Conservatives are angry at passages in which he criticises the coalition’s policy on Libya, and says the chaos in that country has helped cause the current wave of migrants drowning in the Mediterranean. Miliband will say:

The tragedy is that this could have been anticipated. It should have been avoided. And Britain could have played its part in ensuring the international community stood by the people of Libya in practice rather than standing behind the unfounded hopes of potential progress only in principle.

The Tory view is that Mliband is blaming David Cameron for the recent migrant deaths. They’re busy briefing political correspondents that they’re not happy.

Labour rejects this interpretation:

Good morning once again. It’s less than a fortnight to the election, and we’re here once more with all the latest news. I’m Peter Walker, getting things rolling before your regular host, Andrew Sparrow, takes over later this morning. We’ll be watching your comments below with interest, or else you can take to what people used to once call “the micro-blogging social media platform” that is Twitter. I’m @peterwalker99, he’s @andrewsparrow.

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After days of focus on Scotland, and particularly the SNP, today centres very much around England, and the Conservatives’ launch of their mini-manifesto pledges for the English, due to happen just before 11am. This is, needless to say, just the other side of the same story – David Cameron’s efforts to persuade his core support to get out and vote, but now using sweeteners rather than SNP-flavoured warnings.

Ed Miliband, meanwhile, will be trying to shift attention to foreign policy with a speech at the Chatham House thinktank in London, where he will, we are told, lambast Cameron’s “small-minded isolationism” on international affairs.

The big picture

The centrepiece event comes in Lincolnshire – an area with heavy Ukip support – when David Cameron, backed by William Hague, will unveil the English manifesto. At the centre of this is a plan for England-only income tax by 2016, as well as other measures on things like health and housing.

My colleague, Patrick Wintour, has a pretty full preview of the ideas, firmly based around the Conservatives’ core election strategy for squeaking a majority in the new parliament:

Cameron’s repeated warnings to the English of the dangers of the Scottish National party holding the balance of power at Westminster has been directed primarily at the same Ukip vote, and Conservative strategists insist it is working on the doorstep.

Setting out plans for an English income tax, Cameron will begin by referring to changes in Scotland. “Soon the Scottish parliament will be voting to set its own levels of income tax – and rightly so – but that has clear implications. English MPs will be unable to vote on the income tax paid by people in Aberdeen and Edinburgh while Scottish MPs are able to vote on the tax you pay in Birmingham or Canterbury or Leeds. It is simply unfair.”

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Jim Murphy, who leads Scottish Labour, has already condemned the plans as “playing with fire”, and likely to stoke further Scottish independence sentiment. Gordon Brown, too, has said Cameron risks the unity of the UK by “retreating to become the party of English nationalism”.

Many of today’s newspaper front pages similarly reflect how astonishingly tight the election race remains. The Telegraph leads on an attack on Labour’s attitudes to the wealth-creating rich by Lord Digby Jones, the veteran former CBI head who – and I must admit I’d forgotten this – was briefly a trade minister under Gordon Brown. Jones writes an open letter which says:

Not once have they heard you say that earning profit is a ‘good thing’. You can’t really suppress the sneer when you talk of putting up taxes for the likes of them.

The Times and Mail front page leads are similarly self-explanatory. The Mail even manages a page one double whammy of immigration and “union baron” Len McCluskey. No one outside the unions, beyond German aristocrats, are ever called a “baron”:

Arguably the most interesting page one story today is in the Financial Times (paywall). The good news for Cameron is that it’s predicated on the idea business leaders want to see him in power. The bad news? They worry he’s not going about it very well:

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.

If it’s an end to personal attacks the business leaders seeks, they should maybe stay off the news websites today. Ed Miliband will be doing some of his own in a speech, and Patrick Wintour also has extracts of this, due at 11am.

In a foreign policy speech, the Labour leader will say Britain’s capacity to navigate global turbulence is being undermined by a short-sighted and inward-looking foreign policy. He will say: “Cameron has presided over the biggest loss of influence for our country in a generation. And that has happened because the government he led has stepped away from the world, rather than confidently towards it, sidelined in crucial international events time after time under this government, just at the moment when we needed to engage.”

Today’s diary

What we know so far:

• 7.30am: Douglas Alexander, Labour’s shadow foreign secretary, interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
• 7.45am: Danny Alexander, the Lib Dems’ former chief secretary to the Treasury, makes a speech in Aberdeen on the risks of a single-party government relying on “confidence and supply” arrangements with other parties.
• 10.30am: David Cameron and William Hague unveil the Tories’ English manifesto in Lincolnshire.
• 11am: Ed Mliband’s speech on the UK’s place in international affairs, at the Chatham House thinktank in central London.

Reading list for the day

In the Times (paywall), the resident pro-Labour voice Philip Collins – he was formerly Tony Blair’s speechwriter – talks up the post-election idea of a minority Labour-Lib Dem coalition, which would rely on the informal support of the SNP:

[T]here is another prospect if Labour and the Lib Dems fall short of the magic 323 seats required to form a government. They could come together and seek, in concert, the confidence and supply consent of the SNP. That would pose the SNP the choice of whether to be responsible or not while minimising its actual impact in government. This is how Labour muffles the SNP. Ed Miliband should, right now, be preparing a big, open and comprehensive offer to the Liberal Democrats.

This can work if Nick Clegg retains his seat, as he probably will. Senior Labour people can work with Mr Clegg and he with them. Liberal Democrats would offer reassurance that Labour spending would be controlled and a bit of market sensibility into Ed Miliband’s tendency to command into being a capitalism of his own devising.

Over in the Spectator’s Coffee House blog, Isabel Hardman has spotted a rare thing for this election campaign:

I’ve just witnessed an extraordinary moment on the campaign trail in Edinburgh. No, it’s not this, but a political party leader talking to a real voter.

This is Ruth Davidson, Tory leader, talking to a random voter in Edinburgh. I know he was a random voter because I ran after him to check. You never know, after all.

He wanted to ask Davidson some questions about migrants drowning in the Mediterranean. So he wandered up to her and asked them. And she answered. What’s more, the answer seemed natural, he said.

Well, this is strange. Strange, at least, for this campaign.

The reason the Tories in Scotland are doing these sorts of street stalls is that they want to appear visible and accessible and, I suspect, because they’ve got a fantastic leader who doesn’t look like a stereotypical Conservative and who is a real asset to her party.

Meanwhile at The Conversation, a website where academics offer context on the issues of the day, Matthew Francis, a historian at Birmingham University, has some background on the long tradition of Conservative attacks on Labour’s economic competence. He points us to an elaborate seven-minute Tory animated cartoon from the 1930s:

The film, The Socialist Car of State, shows a car marked “Trade and Employment” carrying the personification of England, John Bull, being skilfully piloted around various economic obstacles by the pipe-smoking Conservative prime minister, Stanley Baldwin.

Things begin to go wrong when, first, the car is struck by the “General Strike Charabanc” (allowing various sinister foreigners to steal its precious cargo of jobs and contracts), and, second, when John Bull takes advantage of a stop at the “General Election 1929 Garage” to change drivers. The new driver, the Labour MP Jimmy Thomas, is unable to get the car moving in the right direction and soon weighs the vehicle down with “Socialist Burdens” which, quite literally, cause the wheels to come off.

You can watch the film on the BFI’s website.

If today were a song …

Resisting the temptation to go for an England-themed song, I’ve opted for something more uplifting, if general, as the election race hots up. This, a lovely tune from Oklahoma’s finest, will get your Friday going.

Non-election news story

Today is the 100th anniversary of the start of the disastrous and appallingly bloody Gallipoli campaign, when Allied troops tried to capture the Turkish peninsula. The failed eight-month battle saw more than 140,000 soldiers die, among them 87,000 Turks, almost 30,000 Britons and 11,000 from Australia and New Zealand. Prince Charles and Prince Harry will be among those attending commemoration events there.