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Sunday, January 18

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Morning all,

Welcome to your Sunday politics briefing from me, Tim Shipman.

In today's edition

  • 109 days to go...
  • Dave's terror bromance
  • Nick Clegg on Marr
  • PM set to break personal tax pledge
  • Understanding voters – poll
  • £1m Commons gym renovation

Any tips or feedback tweet us @TimesRedBox.

Top News
2015 general election
Health vs. wealth (Episode IV: A New Hope)

Remember how Labour goes on about the NHS, trying to “weaponise” the issue for voters and the Tories want to make our eyes bleed by hammering away at the economy? Well today is a day of new hope, a moment of release, in which we celebrate the great variety of British politics. Because the Tories are going on about the NHS and Labour is banging on about the economy.

While he may deplore the phrase, Jeremy Hunt is today giving a good impression of someone keen to “weaponise” the NHS in Wales. The health secretary has seized on two interventions this morning in The Sunday Times designed to make life awkward for Ed Miliband. A group of 105 patients who have suffered at the hands of the less than stellar Welsh NHS has written to the Labour leader to complain that he is complaining about a crisis in England, whilst remaining mute about the problems on his party’s watch in Wales. They want a public inquiry into the performance of Welsh health along the lines of the Francis inquiry into the scandal at Mid Staffs hospital. They are backed up by Sir Norman Williams, a former president of the Royal College of Surgeons, who said: “A reluctance to acknowledge clinical concerns resulted in serious harm in Mid Staffs NHS Trust, so it is perhaps time . . . to accept there are significant problems and mount an investigation akin to the Francis Inquiry into Mid Staffs.”

I’m told David Cameron is likely to make hay with all this later this week. He and Hunt will cite figures from a report by the House of Commons library, which points out that on pretty well every metric like A&E waiting times, ambulance times and cancer waits, Wales performs worse than England.

With the Tories campaigning on Labour’s favoured turf, Miliband yesterday made a speech on the economy, seen as Cameron’s strong suit. Seizing on comments made by the prime minister that he wants to see wages rise, Miliband said it was an admission of failure by Cameron that he has failed to raise living standards. Voters, Miliband suggested, would be “choking on their cornflakes”.

“Suddenly he wants to say, after five years of denial, after five years of saying everything is fixed, suddenly he is now the guy who wants wages to go up,” Miliband said. “It is frankly totally implausible and ridiculous.” Miliband central are convinced that Cameron has made a major strategic error by conceding that living standards – a Labour strong suit – have declined. Tories would point out that George Osborne called long ago for a minimum wage of £8 and Boris Johnson is just as vociferous an advocate of a living wage as Labour are.

But that was all yesterday. The health-wealth role reversal has this morning, reverted to type. Labour are back on the NHS, issuing a report which claims that the government’s failure to tackle mental health issues is costing the health service more than £3bn a year and has contributed to the overloading of A&E departments.

The people most likely to be choking on their cornflakes are Miliband’s team, who are digesting the splash in the Mail on Sunday, in which the former mayor of Doncaster, a man who helped Miliband become the town’s MP, claims that Miliband and Balls knew a year early that the economic crash of 2008 was coming and concealed this information from voters. Both urged prime minister Gordon Brown to call a snap Election in 2007 because ‘the economy was about to fall off a cliff’ and it was Labour’s only hope of holding on to power, the paper says. Needless to say, this has given George Osborne reason to start banging on about the economy again. Plus ca change…

The claim, when laid out in 64-point headlines is a damaging one on the surface, though somewhat counterintuitive. If they had really been so sure of a crash surely there would have been an election in 2007 after all. Labour folk were on Twitter last night brandishing the hashtag #stuffEdknowsinadvance fondly hoping that their leader can predict next week’s lottery results. They point out that the ex-mayor Martin Winter has left the Labour party.

Likely to be more damaging in the long run are the details which contribute to the notion abroad with voters that Miliband is an odd cove. When he was seeking selection, Miliband stayed with the Winter family, for a period of time the MoS delights in telling us was “nine and a half weeks” (images you don’t need on a Sunday morning). During that time “he destroyed a carpet after accidentally setting fire to the office he was using – then gave the couple a £25 Muslim prayer mat as a replacement”, “nearly missed a meeting with Brown when he locked himself in another house” and “was given a humiliating lesson in economics by the Winters’ ten-year-old daughter after ‘patronising’ the Winter children”.

Labour will go on a full election war footing today, with the shadow cabinet moving to the party’s headquarters at Brewer’s Green in London. The Observer reveals that Ed Balls and Harriet Harman have fought successful rearguard actions to join the top team of eight who will decide all Labour strategy. The Sunday Times says Labour are planning to replace tuition fees with a graduate tax.

There may be further trouble ahead for Miliband this week. The SNP is plotting a vote on the future of Trident nuclear deterrent. Labour is officially committed to replacing all four boats but the whips have told my colleague James Lyons that more than 50 of his MPs could oppose replacing the ageing submarine and missiles system.

  • A ComRes poll for The Independent on Sunday and Sunday Mirror has turned two common assumptions on their head this morning, suggesting that voters think more favourably of the Conservative party's brand than they do of David Cameron himself – or the Labour party.

  • A Panelbase poll for the Scottish Sunday Times has Labour narrowing the gap behind the SNP to 10 points, but still losing half their seats to the nationalists. And in the first of a regular series of gutsy predictions Peter Kellner, the doyen of British pollsters, suggests that the Tories will end up as the largest party in Westminster on the morning of May 8.

The good news for Miliband? Cameron might struggle to form a coalition and Miliband could still end up as prime minister. That should have Martin Winter choking on his cornflakes...

Analysis by Callum Jones: Why Labour should turn its guns on Ukip in the cost of living debate
2015 Election Countdown
109 days to go
UK security
Dave’s terror bromance angers Labour

The winner of the leaders’ beauty contest last week was David Cameron. How could it not be so when the prime minister received one of the more gushing endorsements of our time from Barack Obama, who labelled him “a great friend” who is “one of my closest and most trusted partners in the world”.

The papers this morning are a reminder that serious business was done in Washington. Here’s my inside track on the three-front assault the leaders agreed to tackle what Cameron is now calling the “poisonous death cult” of Islamist terrorism in Iraq, Syria and Nigeria.

The government will announce at a summit in London on Thursday that it is sending two new drones (double the current number) to tackle Isis in Iraq. After lobbying from Obama, the PM has also authorised the deployment of 70 army personnel to help the Nigerian military combat Boko Haram, the Islamist group that slaughtered 2,000 people last week. It will bring the number of UK troops in Nigeria to 150.

Cameron and Obama have also agreed to send soldiers to start training members of the Syrian opposition in Turkey and Jordan from March.

On the home front, The Sunday Times splashes with news that Ofsted boss Sir Michael Wilshaw will warn that children are still being radicalised in British schools despite the crackdown after the trojan horse scandal and reveals that Scotland Yard wants another 800 counter-terror police.

The Sunday Telegraph splashes with a story about how a “convicted al-Qaeda terror fundraiser with links to the Paris attacks is residing in the UK after using the Human Rights Act to prevent his deportation back to his native Algeria”.

But the fallout from the love-in in the West Wing still occupies the political correspondents. The Mail highlights Cameron’s comments to US political talk show Face the Nation comparing his bromance with Obama to that between Ronnie and Maggie. But it all has senior people in the Labour party enraged at the red carpet treatment. I understand that Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, who was also in Washington last week, told friends it was “extraordinary” that Obama had agreed to write a newspaper article with Cameron, ostensibly backing his economic policies.

Others are irritated that David Axelrod, Obama’s former campaign guru, whom Labour employs on a reported £300,000 contract, has failed to persuade West Wing staff to distance themselves from Cameron. One Labour frontbencher told me: “I’m not quite sure why we’re paying Axelrod £300,000. We should ask for our money back.”

Miliband’s people point out, fairly, that Obama saw him in Washington last year, an honour not usually accorded to opposition leaders, but senior frontbenchers also concede that Miliband blocking the bombing of Syria did cool relations. Certainly, Obama went out of his way to please Cameron. Reporters on the trip were frustrated it all ran so smoothly. It’s a long way from Gordon Brown’s “Snubgate” summit, which still brings some of us to misty tears of nostalgia.

Analysis by Philip Webster: Across the pond, Balls delivers Labour's line on Europe
Lib Dem destiny
Where's Nick?

The biggest victim in the Tory-Labour wealth v health wars is Nick Clegg. The deputy prime minister, who once confidently trumped the Labour leader for news value, has gone the way of his party’s poll ratings in the public eye. With no chance of being prime minister, only as much chance as Nicola Sturgeon of forming a government and less chance than Nigel Farage of saying something newsworthy, he is now firmly a second tier.

But every dog has his day and Clegg will join Andrew Marr shortly. To his credit, Clegg seems determined to remain serious, offering policy rather than gimmicks and to the eternal joy of the reporters offering something different from the NHS or the economy.

On the programme, Nick Clegg is set to unveil a manifesto pledge to eradicate childhood literacy in a decade from May. The party says this can be done by extending the “pupil premium” scheme, under which schools will be sent £300 for each disadvantaged child from April, to £1,000 a head. (The Sun says he has "dreamed up another election whopper".)

The Liberal Democrat leader will also announce plans to boost standards by making a formal teaching qualification compulsory for nursery staff. He is expected to describe the fact that more than a fifth of 11-year-olds can’t read at the expected level as a “national scandal”.

And yet, after a quick scan of this morning's more eye-catching stories on the Deputy PM, you’ll learn of his unpopularity amongst Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidates – and a run-in he had on Friday with the leader of the Her Majesty’s Opposition.

Research by Clegg's coalition friends at CCHQ has found that his picture was used in a mere 3 per cent of Lib Dem election leaflets produced between May 2014 and last month. His name is used in just 2 per cent of the literature. We’ve come a very long way since Cleggmania.

With the Lib Dem leader facing the fight of his life over the coming months, Labour turned up the heat on Friday by sending Ed Miliband into his Sheffield Hallam constituency to ruffle a few feathers. When the pair bumped into each other afterwards at Sheffield railway station, Miliband said: “I thought it would be rude not to say hi.”

“I think you’ve been rude enough about me already,” Clegg replied.

This exchange has the unique distinction in my 14 years experience as a political journalist of being instantly declared “absolutely true” by both Miliband and Clegg’s spin doctors. Yes, it’s amusing, but it also shows Clegg’s thin skin and the unlikelihood of those two working together harmoniously in government. The fact that the Tories are openly briefing against him shows a re-run of this coalition would be no cake walk either.

In the Sindy, Jane Merrick reports one Miliband aide claimed the Deputy PM was at a cashpoint when he bumped into the Labour leader. “We assume he was trying to fund the Lib Dems’ uncosted spending commitments,” they told her. This claim was less warmly embraced by Clegg central.

  • The latest set of polling from YouGov for The Sunday Times finds the Lib Dems on 7 per cent – trailing Ukip by 11 points. Personally, just 18 per cent of voters believe that Clegg is doing well as party leader. Even among those who voted for his party in 2010, just 34 per cent give him the thumbs up.
Analysis by Callum Jones: Why Nick Clegg's looking so chirpy
Comment

“It seems there’s been some kind of terrible misunderstanding about Birmingham. It’s not a new thing, no one’s ever wanted to go there.”

- Parliamentary hopeful Al Murray responds to a Fox News commentator’s allegations about Birmingham

2015 general election
Taxing tale of PM's promise

A pledge by the prime minister to publish his personal tax return this side of the general election looks set to be broken.

After Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone revealed their returns during the London mayoral campaign in 2012, Downing Street suggested that the PM and other ministers would be "relaxed" and "happy" to do the same. However, the chancellor has now indicated to The Sunday Times that there are “no plans” for David Cameron to do this.

“There are genuine issues around taxpayer confidentiality and how it would work in practice,” George Osborne told the ST. “You see it as a feature of some American campaigns but I think there would be quite a lot of practical difficulties. There are no plans at this point. The income I receive is publicly declared.”

Margaret Hodge, the Labour chairwoman of the public accounts committee who has called for better transparency in big businesses' tax affairs, has a bold suggestion: "My own view is that they should stick to what they said they would do."

A spokesman for the deputy prime minister said he would be happy to release his tax details if other party leaders did the same.

Analysis by Philip Webster: Now Osborne backs Boris
Poll
Which of the following is most important to you when deciding who to vote for in a general election?
Exclusive YouGov polling
A glimpse inside voters’ minds

When people tell pollsters who they intend to vote for, they tend to say the party they'd like to win in their constituency, but in reality we know that many will cast their vote tactically (Stephan Shakespeare writes). How many?

In an exclusive YouGov poll for Red Box, we asked: "How do you think you will actually cast your vote?"

  • 71 per cent said it would be "for the party or candidate that I most want to win"
  • 17 per cent said "for a party or candidate that is not my first choice, but who can stop a party I don't like from winning"

We also asked: "Which of the following is most important to you when deciding who to vote for in a general election?"

  • Top of the list was “values and priorities”, 44 per cent
  • “Specific policies”, 21 per cent
  • “Best PM”, 9 per cent
  • “Local candidates”, 7 per cent
  • “Local issues”, 6 per cent
  • “Don't know”, 13 per cent

The Conservatives are banking on the “best PM” factor so will will hope that 9 per cent is a huge under-estimate, as they know that on values they are a long way behind, but that on perceived personal qualities, Cameron beats Miliband just as strongly.

YouGov
Analysis by Callum Jones: The parties can’t choose the ground on which this election will be fought
Comment

“I can't tell you how many emails I get every day telling me what to think, what to do and what to campaign on. I can tell you I never even open them, I delete them”

- Margaret Hodge on messages from Labour’s high command

SW1
Workout this: £1m spent on Commons gym

My colleague James Lyons is a fit and healthy individual who regularly works out in the House of Commons gym. I hope he can run fast enough this morning because he has revealed that MPs have now spent a staggering £1,081,379 on improvements to the facilities.

When it reopens next week, MPs will be able to enjoy a "spinning studio" (named after Speaker John Bercow, gulp) and a new sauna. Jack Straw, Iain Duncan Smith and David Davis are among its users. Those who go whisper quietly about the ageing grandee who performs naked star jumps and the former minister who blow dries his chest rug after a vigorous workout. The renovations, which also include treating damp and improving disabled access, were initially predicted to cost £250,000. However, figures obtained under FOI laws show how they have quadrupled.

Taxpayers' Alliance campaign director Andy Silvester said: “Every day we hear hot air from politicians about balancing the books, so to see that a sauna and a spinning studio have survived the austerity programme is absolutely remarkable, especially when the rest of the estate is in such bad shape.”

Officials have stressed that the figure falls to just above £900,000 when you consider the VAT that will be paid to the Treasury. Bargain.

Exclusive YouGov poll for Red Box: By more than 5 to 1, voters believe TV debates will happen
Comment from Adam Boulton: David Cameron is mistaken if he thinks he won’t be empty-chaired
Comment from Daniel Finkelstein: A four-way debate would help Nigel Farage greatly

This weekend's briefing was edited by Callum Jones.

Top News

Sunday comment


1. How a secret Tory pact has stopped the big beasts snarling
- James Forsyth, The Mail on Sunday

2. The Pope throws a punch while our archbishops merely throw sand
- Adam Boulton, The Sunday Times

3. Enough of the fatalism. It’s a great time to push for change in politics
- Armando Iannucci, The Observer

4. Of course TV debates are risky. Thats the whole point
- Janet Daley, The Sunday Telegraph

5. The fewer young people that vote, the worse for the future of Britain
- Andrew Rawnsley, The Observer
Exclusive YouGov poll for Red Box: Voters think Commons is loud and childish
What The Papers Said

The Sunday Times
  • Tony Blair is to be challenged by parliament over his income, amid claims he stands to earn millions of pounds advising the developers of a gas pipeline backed by the despotic regime of Azerbaijan

  • The Highway Code will need to be re-written to accommodate driverless cars on the road, Nicholas Hellen and Mark Hookam report.


The Sun
  • A YouGov poll for The Sun shows that the number of people who say they have more to spend than 12 months ago has risen by a third in two months.

  • A prostitute is accusing a top government economist of attacking her, the paper reports.

  • The paper says the PM was having a "pop at the pope" when saying that people should be able to poke fun at religion.

  • Guido reveals that Ruwan Kodikara has joined Nick Clegg's team as Head of Media and Brand.


Daily Mail
  • Boris Johnson has invited "a batch of Tory MPs" to have tea and crumpets at his London home between now and the election, Black Dog reports.

The Observer
  • Relief organisations are unhappy at David Cameron's attempts to get a top UN job for his former health secretary, Andrew Lansley, the paper reports.

  • The latest Opinium/Observer poll gives Labour a five-point lead over the Conservatives.


The Independent on Sunday
  • Commentator Iain Dale looks ahead to the general election.

  • Former Conservative party advisor Derek Laud accuses the party of having a racist approach to immigration in a new book.

Follow the comings and goings of SW1 throughout the week on the Red Box website
Agenda
Monday
  • London: John Key, prime minister of New Zealand, meets with David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Bank of England governor Mark Carney and Sajid Javid, the culture secretary
  • Brussels: European foreign ministers convene
  • Theresa Villiers, Northern Ireland secretary, questioned by MPs on 'On The Runs' scheme
  • David Laws, Lib Dem schools minister, gives speech on effective government

Tuesday
  • Brussels: Business secretary Vince Cable meets with Frans Timmermans, first vice-president of the European Commission
  • Brussels: Tony Blair meets with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker
  • Cardiff: Welsh first minister Carwyn Jones expected to face questions from assembly members over NHS
  • Lords science and technology committee hears from Ed Davey, the energy secretary
  • London: Labour mayoral hopeful David Lammy speaks at event on reform of politics in the capital

Wednesday
  • PMQs
  • Davos: Four-day world economic forum annual meeting begins, with expected attendees including Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, John Kerry, Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande, Matteo Renzi and Jacob Zuma
  • London: Fumio Kishida, the Japanese foreign minister, meets with the foreign and defence secretaries
  • London: Green party leader Natalie Bennett speaks at an Electoral Reform Society event

Thursday
  • 9.30am: ONS and Treasury publish monthly public sector finance figures
  • Eastleigh: Question Time

Friday
  • Davos, 12pm: George Osborne speaks
  • Somerset, 8pm: Peter Hain and Lord Steel take part in Any Questions
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