‘Boris Johnson last night urged Ukip voters to ‘swing behind the Conservatives’ to avoid the ‘nightmare’ of a ‘backward-looking Labour government’ propped up by an ‘even more Left-wing’ SNP. The London Mayor claimed Ukip supporters are in ‘increasing psychological conflict’ as they realise a vote for Nigel Farage’s party is a ‘vote for Ed Miliband’. ‘A lot want to come home to the Tories. Any gain by Ukip is a gain by Miliband,’ he told the Daily Mail as he campaigned in the Thanet South.’ – Daily Mail Leader
>Yesterday: WATCH: Ashdown claims 60 Tory ‘bastards’ make up ‘Nigel’s fifth column’
‘Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former Conservative foreign secretary, has urged Tories in Scotland to consider voting Labour to keep out the Scottish National party. Emotional language must only be used if it is “entirely justified”, according to Sir Malcolm, but the SNP posed such an existential threat that unusual tactics should be considered in next month’s general election.’ – The Times (£)
Editorials
>Today:
>Yesterday:
‘The former Conservative leader set out a powerful moral case for the party’s policies, which have reduced welfare dependency and got two million more into work. ‘Labour doesn’t understand work. They don’t understand the importance of work in a cultural, social and health sense,’ he said. ‘Instead they’re saying “here are the people we hate”. They hate people who get up early in the morning and work to get a business off the ground, they hate people who take risks, hate people that earn money, hate people that create jobs. They are reinventing the politics of envy.’ – Daily Mail
‘Military chiefs are preparing to offer one of Britain’s biggest warships to tackle the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean that has left thousands of migrants dead. The deployment of HMS Bulwark, a 176-metre launchpad for helicopters and small vessels that protected London during the 2012 Olympics, is among options under consideration after ministers yesterday backed a “more formidable operation on the sea” in response to the deaths of up to 1,300 migrants over the past week.’ – The Times (£)
>Yesterday: Jeremy Lefroy on Comment: Flawed and failed – not to mention immoral. The EU policy of deterring migrants by drowning them.
‘David Cameron will today pledge to deliver nine million extra hours of childcare each week for free in a bid to help get struggling mums and dads back to work. The PM will vow to give everyone in the country a chance to get back to work full-time if they want to – by lifting the burden of childcare costs.’ – The Sun (£)
‘Wikipedia has blocked a user account on suspicions that it is being used by the Conservative party chairman, Grant Shapps, “or someone acting on his behalf” to edit his own page along with the entries of Tory rivals and political opponents…on Tuesday night, he said it was “categorically false and defamatory. It is untrue from start to finish, and was quite likely dreamt up by the Labour press office. Sadly it is typical of the smears coming from those who would rather not debate policy and substance,” Shapps said.’ – The Guardian
‘The health watchdog that damned the NHS’s first privately run hospital ignored a spot check by its own inspectors that found huge improvements in standards. The vital findings have been suppressed for nearly four months, and have only emerged now after the Care Quality Commission quietly revised its report to rate many of the hospital’s services as ‘good’. In January the commission branded Hinchingbrooke in Cambridgeshire as ‘inadequate’ and placed it in special measures, along with a dozen of the worst hospitals in the country. But today the watchdog will upgrade this to ‘requires improvement’ and publish a glowing report.’ – Daily Mail
‘More than half of Labour candidates in winnable seats are sponsored by just one hard-left trade union. Fifty-four of the party’s contenders for 106 target constituencies are either members of Unite, or are endorsed or partially bankrolled by it. The analysis by the Mail lays bare the extraordinary stranglehold the union’s firebrand leader ‘Red’ Len McCluskey has on Ed Miliband.’ – Daily Mail
>Today:
>Yesterday:
‘Mr Clegg announced on Tuesday that the Lib Dems would ensure employees in the public sector were “no longer subject to real-terms cuts in their pay from the first full year of the next parliament”. The party would issue guidance to public sector pay review bodies to ensure pay increases at least in line with inflation in 2016-17 and 2017-18.’ – FT
‘The decision not to prosecute the Lord Janner of Braunstone over child abuse offences should be reversed amid public concerns of a “whitewash”, an alliance of senior politicians has said. In an unprecedented show of unity during a general election campaign, eleven leading figures from seven parties say in a letter to The Times today that Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, is “damaging public confidence” in the criminal justice system with her ruling.’ – The Times (£)
‘The integrity of the election result is under threat from the widespread practice of families filling in their postal votes together, legal experts have warned. The Law Commission is being urged to ensure that May 7 is the last time that millions of Britons are allowed to choose to vote by post instead of going to a polling station. Lawyers say that the sanctity of the secret ballot is threatened by mass postal voting and there is a risk of coercion where heads of families decide how all their relatives will vote.’ – The Times (£)