Keep up with all the latest election news with Andrew Sparrow and the Guardian politics team, as the battle buses roll out across the UKFarage to attack Cameron over immigration levels pledgeCameron’s warning on Labour’s £3,000 ‘tax rise’ is shot down by IFSLib Dems pledge £2bn extra funding for mental healthCatch up with our essential morning briefing 10.05am BST Nicola Sturgeon was interviewed on BBC Radio Scotland this morning. As my colleague Libby Brooks reports, she said the SNP would not support a minority Labour government in on a “confidence and supply” basis if it went ahead with Trident renewal.Pushed by host Gary Robertson whether Trident was still a red line and precisely where that red line sat, Sturgeon clarified (at least to an extent).She has said all along a formal coalition with Labour is highly unlikely. A less formal agreement of confidence and supply would need a formal agreement that the renewal of Trident wasn’t proceeding, she said. 9.54am BST On Sky this morning David Cameron said that in 2010 Britain was on the brink and had a deficit forecast to be higher than Greece’s.My colleague Alberto Nardelli has been fact checking this. Here’s his conclusion.By a very narrow measure, with no context, Cameron can make that claim but it is just not comparing like with like and does not stand up to scrutiny. 9.51am BST Clegg launches Lib Dem mental health manifestoClegg heaps praise on Tim Farron: "I'm a great fan of Tim." Says attacks by Cable, Ashdown etc are not in his nameNick Clegg has been a force for good on mental health stigma but the reality is that MH services have gone backwards under the coalitionIt costs £12,000 inc VAT per seat for a Lib Dem election campaign bus season ticket. The price of democracy. 9.29am BST Nick Clegg has been posing for a selfie with Joey Essex. No, I’ve never heard of him either, but apparently he’s a reality TV star, and the trendy people in the office tell me people will be interested..@JoeyEssex_ Really nice to meet you this morning. Sorry about the early start! Hope the programme goes well! pic.twitter.com/QOyyIUSc1I 9.21am BST Those weren’t the most revealing interviews ever. But we did learn a few things that were new. Here are the key lines from David Cameron’s morning interviews.What we’ve done through this parliament is we’ve actually improved the money that goes to the most disabled people in our country. We’ve replaced one benefit – disability living allowance – with a new benefit – personal independence payment – it’s working well, it is also going to lead to some savings over time and we haven’t created that benefit in order to undermine it. We want to enhance it and safeguard it.We have funded the first part of that, with £2bn extra in the coming year, and we have said that combined with efficiencies and the extra spending we are going to put in, we are confident we can achieve the Stevens plan in full.It depends how much you save from efficiencies. Majority government is more accountable. What I put in my manifesto is the programme for the government. Nothing gets haggled away in backroom deals. And I think people want the clarity, that certainty, that accountability from the election and the outcome.For the next 37 days there is no plan B.I’m not having talks with anyone. I barely have time to have talks with my wife, let alone talks with anyone else.I think it’s a totally fair assumption. If Labour want to come forward now and change the assumptions and set out their own assumptions, then they can. But in the meantime, the best calculation available is the one that we have made.The Office for Budget Responsibility predicted half that number of jobs in the last parliament and we doubled what they predicted and we’re believing that we can do that again. 8.48am BST Severin Carrell, our Scotland correspondent, reports that Jim Murphy, the Scottish Labour leader, will press forward with a plan announced last week to spend £175m on a Scottish anti-poverty fund during a visit to a food bank in Edinburgh South, a marginal seat which the Scottish National party is threatening to take, later this morning. 8.41am BST My colleague Nicholas Watt thinks David Cameron was less than frank in his Today interview when asked he he regretted passing Andrew Lansley’s health reforms. (See 8.22am.)Clever @Sarah_Montague asks @David_Cameron if stop Andrew Lansley NHS reforms if had time again. Private views unsuitable for morn audience 8.31am BST Here’s the full audio of Cameron’s interview on the Today programme: 8.30am BST Q: On Thursday you will stand next to Nicola Sturgeon in the debate. What will you do to convince here that the SNP should not vote down the Conservatives? 8.26am BST Q: Where will you find the £12bn welfare cuts. You have explained £2bn, but not the other £10bn.Cameron says he is saying the government needs to save £1 out of every £100 the government spends for the next two years. He would rather do that than put put taxes or borrowing. 8.22am BST Q: Do you regret passing Andrew Lansley’s Health Act? 8.18am BST Q: Can you commit to spending the extra £8bn that the NHS needs?Cameron says the government has already allocated £2bn. He says he is confident that the Simon Stevens plan (that requires an extra £8bn) can be met in full. 8.15am BST Q: You were asked last week what you regretted, and you said you promised to make politics more polite and failed.Cameron says he was not being impolite yesterday. 8.14am BST Sarah Montague is interviewing David Cameron. 7.55am BST Here are today’s YouGov polling figures.Update: Con & Lab tied - Latest YouGov / The Sun results 30th Mar - Con 35%, Lab 35%, LD 8%, UKIP 12%, GRN 5%; APP-10 http://t.co/YegZcU9g92 7.43am BST Here’s the audio of Cameron on Good Morning Britain. 7.42am BST Q: You say you won’t serve a third term. So, if people like you, and there’s going to be a leadership battle, we should they vote for you?Cameron says he will serve a full third term. But he won’t go on and on and on. 7.39am BST Q: Is it because you don’t know where the cuts will fall? Or do you know and aren’t saying?Cameron says, where the Conservatives know where they want to cut, they have been clear about this. 7.37am BST Q: You have said you will cut £12bn from the welfare budget. Why won’t you tell people where that will come from?Cameron says the Conservatives have been the most specific of all the parties about saying where the money for cuts will come from. The government needs to find £1 from every £100 it spends. It is better to do that than to put up taxes or increase borrowing. 7.36am BST Q: You are running a negative campaign, aren’t you?David Cameron says he is talking about his plans to create 2m jobs. You can’t be more positive than that. 7.34am BST Morning. I’m taking over from Claire now. 7.32am BST Here’s the full audio of Cameron on Sky News. 7.31am BST Asked about his pledge not to serve a third term, Cameron says he was giving a straight answer to a straight question. He said he didn’t necessarily believe that all prime ministers go mad. 7.29am BST Cameron rejects the interviewer’s portrayal of him as Scrooge. He says the election is a choice between cutting welfare and a spending Labour party. 7.27am BST Cameron pledges to train three million apprentices in the next parliament. There is no reason why we can’t carry on creating a thousand jobs per day, he repeats. 7.26am BST Cameron says he is going to work flat out for a Conservative majority. 7.26am BST Cameron says the public want a majority government that “won’t get haggled away in backroom deals”. 7.25am BST Next up Sky News. This time in the studio. Cameron is asked about his refusal to take part in head to head debates with Ed Miliband. The interviewer said it would have been better to debate with Miliband than “getting clubbed to death by Paxo”. 7.21am BST Here’s the full audio of Cameron’s interview on BBC Breakfast. 7.19am BST Cameron again said the choice was between carrying on with the Conservative’s economic plan or opting for Labour which has refused to set out how it would make spending efficiencies. PM clear on @BBCBreakfast - 2m jobs is something Cons "believe" they can create, not s/thing they're pretending they can guarantee 7.18am BST Presumably meant in the sense of trying to “psych out” his opponents, but this is unfortunate phrasing….@BBCBreakfast has just accused @David_Cameron of engaging in 'a bit of psycho campaigning' #ge2015 7.17am BST What business can’t find a £1 of saving for every £100 of spending, Cameron said referring to the Conservative’s budget plans. On benefits savings, Cameron said in the next parliament the Conservatives would look for half as much savings on benefits as it had in this parliament. Cameron refused to rule out privatising disability living allowance. 7.14am BST Cameron insisted that the Conservative’s claim about Labour’s tax bill was “fair” despite claims by the Institute for Fiscal studies that it was unhelpful. Cameron said the election was a choice between a government that will find savings and won’t pick your pocket, and a Labour party that would pick people’s pockets. 7.12am BST Cameron kicks off a round of breakfast interviews by claiming his coalition government created 1,000 jobs per day. 7.00am BST Good morning and welcome back to the Guardian’s election live blog as we settle in for the long campaign. Knowing how you hate to miss a key pledge, candidate gaffe or mis-spelt party leaflet, we will be live blogging every day from 7am till late to bring you every question, answer and evasion from now until 7 May (and likely beyond). “Clowns to the left of him” says a Tory source re the debate line up: http://t.co/dKc422qn1B pic.twitter.com/EiIZeklc2f They are different. They want to break up Britain. You cannot deal with these people …There’s a very natural instinct to keep more of their own money to spend because you want to spend it on your family, you want to try and plan for a nice holiday, have a bit more put aside for Christmas, take the children on that trip you want to take them on.That’s the most natural instinct in the world. Owning your own home – I’ll never forget the moment I got the first keys to my first flat and walked through the door. You just feel so excited that you own something and you’re going to take care of it.She will be sometimes on her own, going to support candidates, some of the time with me, some of the time sorting out the children’s homework and her business and everything else she’s got to do.She’ll take multi-tasking to a new level.There is an interesting mixture of arrogance and insecurity in the failure by the Conservative and Labour leaders to reinvent their parties. On the one hand, both are so convinced of the strength of their own argument that they do not feel the need to win over non-believers; on the other, each also feels that their only task so close to an election is to secure the support they already have rather than trying to shake up the system.The bitterness and negativity that will only intensify between now and May 7th derive from the fact that each party is going into battle from a position of weakness rather than strength. They are fighting fear with fear in the hope that by attacking their rivals they will protect themselves by turning attention away from their own faults. If she was really honest, she’d admit another five years of the Tories is exactly what she wants in the hope that would provoke Scots to be “all in” for another independence referendum. The greatest gamble of all.But here’s the truth. If you play in the SNP casino, it’s the Tories’ house that always wins.Burning with energy, blessed with an enviably able new leader, the SNP feels like the party of most Labour activists’ secret dreams … With motions on more generous benefits, land reform, no fracking, no austerity, no Trident, when Nicola Sturgeon says SNP support would give Labour ‘backbone and guts’, a good many English Labour party members might nod in agreement.It’s everyone’s personal choice whether they speak publicly. I’ve come to a position in my own mind that it’s time someone talked about it. I couldn’t have done this five or six years ago. Our predictions for the U.K. election: http://t.co/7NSj88FMJS #GE2015 pic.twitter.com/C8W1JncRfz Continue reading...
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