The UK General Election 2005 Thread

Agreed, though the media are already totally boring with it.

Election fraud - suddenly a possibility - nobody mentions the perpitrators are south Asian.....

I'm a member of the Labour party, too, Steve.

British Tories will go after the man, not the ball
[nimh: If that doesnt translate to English - its a soccer metaphor.]

[..] While in the US the suspense is gradually increased and climaxes with the television debates, the British campaign season goes off to a flying start, where everyone has to score his points immediately. It's as if the actual campaign only starts in extra time. There is hardly any time to come back in front from behind.

Yesterday saw the first and also straight away last occasion on which the political leaders crossed swords with each other directly in a debate.

Tony Blair (Labour), Michael Howard (Conservatives) and Charles Kennedy (Liberal Democrats) had prepared thoroughly for the last question time of the Prime Minister before the elections for the House of Commons on May 5.

Because the prime minister refuses to take part in a TV debate, it was the only time they could really fend with each other. In the coming weeks they will only still be questioned separately by journalists.

[nimh: I was absolutely flabbergasted first hearing this, by the way. Read that there was just the one time the leaders appear on television together, and at the beginning of the campaign at that! And its not even a proper debate! They're separately questioned, not even allowed to debate each other! It's worse still than in the US. Unimaginable for a Dutchman. That on an aside.]

Howard straight away showed what the Tory strategy is. In the coming weeks all their arrows will be targeted directly on the person of the PM. The Conservatives want to make a referendum on Blair himself out of the elections. The Tories have even dropped the old slogan "Vote Blair but Get Brown" entirely, because the latter is now more popular among the electorate than the former.

Their central theme is the long list of broken promises of Tony Blair. Inviting a resounding echo from his own backbenchers Howard yesterday summed up the failures of Blair: crime is UP, immigration UP, taxes UP, tuition fees UP, waiting lists UP, school absenteeism UP, incomes are DOWN, pensions are DOWN. Why should people ever believe another word of his again?, was the conclusion of the Conservative leader.

Labour for the first time sees the person of Blair himself as a burden rather than an advantage in the election campaign. The party even supplied its own candidates with separate election leaflets that have neither the name nor the photo of the Prime Minister.

No less than 70 percent of Labour's MP's have chosen for these leaflets. Howard asked the Labour MPs directly who in the campaign in his own district still dares to use the election leaflets with the photo of the prime minister. To the hilarity of the Conservative backbenches only twelve hands were raised. The Tories will make no secret of who people will get when Labour wins the elections this time: Vote Tony Blair and Get Tony Blair.

Blair in his turn left no doubt about how he will hit back the coming weeks. He will remind voters continuously about the failings of the Conservative government of before 1997, of which Michael Howard himself was part.

The poll tax, unemployment, fewer police on the street, recession, that's how Blair sketched what the country's like under a Tory government. "Yes, the British people awaits an important decision and I can't wait until the moment it will make it."

If the electorate does not support him, the country will return, according to Blair, to the horrors of eighteen years of Tory governments. "I say to the British people: economic stability is at stake, your job is at stake, your mortgage is at stake", he spoke threateningly yesterday.

In these elections, it will be the man, not the ball the players will go after. Blair and Howard will make each other out to be boogeyman in the coming weeks and retaliate with successive doom scenarios. Some even fear the campaign will devolve into banal slanging matches. Labour in emails already portrayed the Tory leader as a pig. In this way, the parties attempt to disguise the lack of programmatic differences.

Both parties stand for a tough approach to crime and restricting immigration, although the Tories go a step further still than Labour. The financial-economic policy hardly differs. It's true that the Conservatives have promised to lower taxes, but they haven't specified yet how they want to do that.

On the count of foreign politics there is even hardly any difference at all, because the prime minister has eliminated the hot button issue of Europe from the agenda by promising a referendum in 2006. If there are differences, it's mostly personal differences. And it looks like that's also what the campaign will focus on.

Kennedy launches big push for 70-plus seats

Ambitious Lib Dems seek to enhance national status

Tania Branigan, political correspondent
Friday April 8, 2005
The Guardian

The Liberal Democrats are keen to promote their anti-war credentials. But at this election they are abandoning 2001's "Maginot line" strategy in favour of the big push.

Many pundits predicted that the party would lose seats at the last election; instead, it gained six. This time its strategy is "offensive, not defensive - much more ambitious," said one frontbencher.

Its well-honed local campaign machine has brought it to a high point of 54 MPs. But to hike its share of the vote and claim 70 or more seats it must emphasise its national status. "This really is moving from the ground war, which we are adept at, to the air war," Charles Kennedy said this week.

Under its new director of communications, Sandy Walkington - formerly at BT - the party is mounting its biggest advertising campaign since the launch of the SDP. The newspaper and billboard adverts are funded by the five- and six-figure donations now arriving, which have boosted overall election spending to an unprecedented £6m.
The message will focus on Mr Kennedy, regarded as one of the party's major weapons thanks to his popularity with the public.

But it must also ensure that electors know what the Lib Dems stand for - beyond not being the other parties - and convince sympathisers that a vote for them is not "wasted".

A Guardian/ICM poll this week gave them 21% - 3% more than they polled in 2001. They usually advance once the election is called, but have already garnered more publicity than usual, and face a rougher campaign with attacks from both Labour and the Tories. The policy and research team has been beefed up to rebut such assaults.

Mr Kennedy insists the party has already broken out of its traditional territory in the Highlands and south-west, with MPs in Greater London and the north.

This time its 50-plus target seats include northern cities, where it hopes to slash large Labour majorities. "Good second places" are as important as victories for its long-term prospects.

Its optimism is based partly on its local success in taking control of Liverpool and Newcastle city councils among others. But the traffic has not been all one way: in the last few years, Labour has reclaimed control of Sheffield. The party must also persuade people who backed them at a local level - where it is clear they can have real influence - to do so in a general election, knowing full well that they will remain the smallest of the three main parliamentary parties.

The Lib Dems' "decapitation" strategy also aims to unseat high-profile Tories: Oliver Letwin, David Davis, Theresa May and, less plausibly, Tim Collins and even Michael Howard. Mr Kennedy believes a "Portillo moment" would show his party is a force to be reckoned with.

He will need to woo key groups: Labour voters who still dislike the Tories intensely; students angered by tuition fees; and Muslim voters angered by the Iraq war.

The risk is that his measured tones will be drowned out by a shrill Labour-Tory battle. But Mr Kennedy's refusal to join in indicates cold calculation, not piety: "What's turning people more and more from politics is the absolutely relentless negative campaigning," he said.

"People don't need a running commentary from me to make their minds up about Labour or the Conservatives - but they do about the Liberal Democrats."

The party's traditional strength in pavement-pounding, under the guidance of Lord Rennard, is also challenged by the increase in target seats, which spreads its activists more thinly.

"It's hardly the swarming yellow army that people picture," said one candidate.

"It's not that there are more Lib Dem activists," agreed a gloomy Tory MP. "The difference is that they've got discipline and Labour and Tory ones are lazy and complacent."

But he added that his colleagues were now "cute" to the threat of the Lib Dems, and predicted that while Mr Kennedy's party could score unexpected victories in three-way marginals such as Watford by leapfrogging the Tories, they could also lose seats such as Guildford.

Lib Dems say they are taking nothing for granted. In most target and vulnerable seats, voters have received between four and six pieces of literature in the last month alone.

"Last time people didn't follow Chris [Rennard's] instructions and the difference between those who did and who didn't - like in the Isle of Wight [which the party lost] - was very clear. The message got through," said one front-bencher.

Totnes is poised to change

The Wrap Roundup: Election special

Friday April 8, 2005

Welcome to the first of our special election issues of the Wrap Roundup. Ros Taylor, who's writing about the election full-time, picks the most engaging and provocative columns, comment and analysis from the dailies and the news weeklies.
______________________________

Don't make the mistake of assuming Labour will walk away with a substantial majority. This isn't going to be a rerun of 2001. The fact that many of the polls are neck-and-neck doesn't mean that Labour won't win, of course - the marginal seats will decide it rather than the overall percentages - but political commentators nearly all agree: as the Economist says today, expect the unexpected.

The Independent's Matthew Norman went as far as to suggest that the country is ready for a bit of Michael Howard's hardline Conservativism. The growing assumption that a vote for Tony Blair means two or three years of a Brown premiership is reassuring the left of the Labour party (Polly Toynbee while disgusting the right (Boris Johnson in the Spectator). The FT complained today that Britain's electoral system was biased in Labour's favour and that the party could pull off a Pyrrhic victory.

Both Mr Blair and Mr Howard have appeared tired and irritable as they answered reporters' questions, and journalists have begun to grumble about how few opportunities they have to get close to the leaders. The Telegraph's Alice Thomson says very few Britons have a real idea of what Blairism is: the PM needs to set out his vision.

The selection of Nick Herbert to replace Howard Flight in Arundel initially looked like a gaffe. Mr Herbert turned out to have expressed views on taxation that were pretty similar to Mr Flight's, albeit in a Spectator article in 2002. But since the Sun, Times and Telegraph have all called for tax cuts, they were in no mood to pursue the story, and the Times was effusive in its praise for Mr Herbert this morning.

Worried New Statesman readers who want to send Tony Blair a message (without actually ousting him) should vote tactically to make their point, the magazine says this week. With only six in ten of the electorate bothering to vote last time, getting the vote out remains the preoccupation of all the parties and the broadsheets.

What about the tabloids? Well, the Mirror appears to have returned to the fold: it printed a handwritten five-page letter from Mr Blair earlier this week with little criticism. The Sun is undecided. In the meantime, a trio of page three girls - each wearing a sequinned bikini in the appropriate colour - have been assigned to political duty. If the Sun deems her party to have performed well, one of them removes her top each day. So far, the Lib Dem has kept hers firmly in place.

* Ros Taylor reviews the papers' political coverage in our free weekday Election Briefing email.

Ah, I see I'm not the only one anal enough to actually go and re-insert all the links in a text after copy/pasting it

Immigration heads election battle

Tory leader Michael Howard is accusing Tony Blair of "pussyfooting" around immigration problems as the election campaign resumes after a two-day pause.
Mr Howard said immigration was "out of control" and said the issue "should not be swept under the carpet".

But Labour Cabinet minister Peter Hain accused the Conservatives of "scurrilous, right-wing, ugly tactics".

The Lib Dems are launching their battle bus, with leader Charles Kennedy promising to fight a positive campaign.

Campaigning was suspended on Friday for the Pope's funeral and remained low-key on Saturday while party leaders attended the royal wedding celebrations.

The truce is over and three opinion polls in Sunday's newspapers suggest Labour has a lead of between 2% and 7% over the Tories, with the Lib Dems another 14% behind.

'Speaking up'

Mr Howard will make a speech later on Sunday on immigration in which he is due to say "Mr Blair may want to pussyfoot around this issue, but I don't".

He told GMTV's Sunday Programme: "Immigration today is out of control and that is a matter of great concern for the future of good community relations in Britain... it's of concern for our national security; it's a concern for the future of our public services.


"Immigration is of real concern to very many people of all parties and of none. A lot of people say I should not talk about these things and that they should be swept under the carpet; I do not agree with that.

"You have to face up to problems; you have to identify them; and you have to say what you would do about them."

In his speech Mr Howard will attack commentators who accuse him of "being a traitor" to his immigrant roots for raising the issue. People from ethnic minorities believe controls are essential for community relations, he will say.

His speech comes a day after the UN's refugee agency urged politicians to act responsibly and not spread "asylum myths".

'Stirring'

In response Mr Hain, Labour's Leader of the House of Commons, told the same programme that Labour understood immigration was an issue people were concerned by.

"We have been seeking to tackle it. Michael Howard is just shamelessly using this issue to try and scare people back into voting Conservative without proposing any workable solution," he said.


Labour is also attacking Conservative plans for processing all asylum claims overseas and putting annual limits on immigration and asylum.

It is highlighting the views of ex-Tory immigration minister Charles Wardle, who worked with Mr Howard at the Home Office.

Mr Wardle, who lost the Tory whip in 2001 for supporting an independent candidate, says he is not a member of any political party.

But he says Labour has the most practical immigration policies and argues that Mr Howard's proposals show he is "utterly unsuited" to be prime minister.

'Battle bus'

Elsewhere Tony Blair will speak about education in a speech in north-east England, while Gordon Brown will tell activists in Yorkshire that the Tories would jeopardise the economy.

Mr Blair compares his relationship with Mr Brown to a "marriage" in a News of the World interview.

The Lib Dems say they are determined to be positive during the election - a message Mr Kennedy will stress in a speech to candidates and activists in London.

The main theme for his speech will be how to make the UK a better place to live. He will press for fairness and social justice through better pensions, replacing the council tax and scrapping university tuition fees.

Mr Kennedy will also be unveiling his election "battle bus", whose first visit will be to one of the party's target seats, Islington South.

Among the smaller parties, UK Independence Party leader Roger Knapman will explain his core campaign themes to the party's Scottish conference.