Wednesday 3 May 2017

The "I just can't write another 1500 words today so here are some pictures" election - day 15

Tory campaign


Amber Rudd was very positive on Today, about very little.  She put on her best stentorian tones to remind those EU wallahs that the question of expats' rights should be a top priority in the Brexit negotiations.  It's as if she hasn't read the EU negotiating guidelines, which put it at... top priority.

She also mumbled spomething about this election being called to avoid having to fight one in the middle of Brexit negotiations.  The government line is that everything will be done, dusted and tied up in sparkly bows byMarch 2019, and "we're going to make a success of it".

Success or otherwise is a matter for later evaluation, but nobody outside the UK believes in the "everything in two years" idea, so this might be a rare bit of honesty - fear of an election in the middle of a transitional period which the voters had been told wouldn't happen and when many things have yet to be finalised.

But very odd to come out with it.  Not #StrongAndStable™ at all.



Labour campaign


The main story of the whole day though, and it's probably already lined up for the first three slots in the review of 2017's news, was... a Diane Abbott brain fade.  I heard her on Today, then saw/heard her on Nick Ferrari's LBC programme.  Repeatedly.  She was weak on the former and, honestly, seemed to have lost it on the latter.

But first item on every BBC news bulletin for the rest of the day, plus analysis on Daily Politics, PM and Newsnight?  Is there really nothing else going on?  Abbott was doing the rounds to promote Labour's proposal of 10,000 new "bobbies on the beat", a truly New Labour combination of tradition and community.  There's some strong police support for the idea, and some warnings that any extra money might be better directed.

Abbott didn't have her numbers ready to put the obvious questions down and move on to the guts of the policy, so mostof the news didn't go on to the guts of the policy.  The number the party finally came out with - £300 million - might be enough to pay 10,000 police officers, but it isn't enough to recruit, train, equip and employ them.

@DannyShawBBC @BBCWorldatOne Around 60k per capita plus recruitment, equipment and training cost - around £700m
There are serious worries that a long period of general decline in crime figures is coming to an end, especially for violent crime, and that hitherto uncounted sexual, fraud and online offences need attention, so Abbott & co will have to do a lot better than this.


I'm sorry, even Corbyn's first eleven isn't much good, but constant reports of Abbott "appearing to be confused" abvout the numbers are disingenuous attacks.




Theresa May goes to Cornwall




Is there a Theresa May impersonator out there?  Surely Lynton Crosby wouldn't allow this to happen. 

When you really love chips...















Jennifer Williams from the Manchester Evening News recalls a piece she wrote in 2015 about cutting real people out of election campaigning, then muses "Mind you 'effective' and 'democratic' are not always known to go hand in hand."


And Ed Miliband shows them all how it's done.



At some point during the day there was a security lapse and Theresa May actually encountered a voter!


And which party is #MrsME standing for?



George Osborne new job - as saboteur



Osborne finally clocked on at the Evening Standard, 30 minutes later than his predecessor was wont to do.  Was this all his own work, or did they have today's headline in the bank already?


London cabbies came out to protest outside demonstrated his reportedly corrupt closeness to Uber and the Committee on Business Appointments ("toothless" - Private Eye) has told Osborne that he's a very naughty boy.

“The committee is very concerned that despite the press statement noting you were still seeking the committee’s advice, you subsequently signed a contract of employment with the Evening Standard on 20 March - without having received the committee’s advice.

“It was not appropriate for you to do so.

“You did not disclose any intention to do so to the committee when you originally submitted your application, nor have you provided an explanation for this during the course of the committee’s consideration.”


Saboteurs department

Watching Jeremy Corbyn mixing with people, while May avoids us, is educational.  If he had time to meet everybody in the country Labour might have a chance.  Except maybe in Barrow, where John Woodcock (Labour, majority 795) has declared himself an anti-Corbyn Labour candidate.  There have always been Labour candidates trying to get elected without taking much notice of the leader (Corbyn used to be one), but making it a central part of your campaign, including TV interviews, is a novelty.

The government has finally given in to a court decision and will issue its air pollution strategy next week.  A good opposition would pick that up for the election campaign, especially if it doesn't figure in the Tory manifesto.  A good opposition.

Philip Cowley of Queen Mary University of London told Daily Politics that May will benefit from German reports of the leaks about a Downing St dinner.  She'll be happy to be seen standing up to those nasty Brussells bureaucrats.

Richard Michael John Ogilvie Graham (Conservative, Gloucester, majoority 7,241) is not a widely known figure, but he might get noticed this week.

One of my favourite (largely because his voice reminds me of Ivor Cutler) MPs Roger Mullin tried to point out potentially corrupt Tory money dealings while he still had access to Commons headed notepaper.




David Allen Green, law and policy commentator at the FT, put out a Twitter thread (16 tweets) on #MrsME's problems with expats' rights (you might have to do a bit of clicking if the thread seems to end prematurely).

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