“The April dates are unacceptable to Cameron, who has repeatedly said he wants the debates to take place before the “short campaign” begins on March 30. He also wants the Democratic Unionist party, which has launched legal action because it has so far been excluded, to be included. The broadcasters have also fallen foul of the Lib Dems, who are furious Clegg has been placed on equal footing with Plaid Cymru, which got one-sixtieth as many votes in 2010.” – Sunday Times (£)
“The Conservatives have taken a two-point lead, their first since Opinium started polling, and highest share of the vote, since March 2012. The Conservatives have risen by two points since a week ago to 35%, while Labour has correspondingly dropped two points to 33%. Ukip has risen slightly to 15%. Once again the Greens have squeezed into fourth place on 7%, while the Lib Dems drop two points to 6%.” – Observer
“There are 23 seats where around 11,200 votes take us from being where we are at the moment — the largest party without an overall majority — to a party with an overall majority. When you say that to people they understand that their vote really matters. Despite all the commentators saying we can’t have an overall majority, of course we can. By comparison, Labour would need to win 70 constituencies. They need to pick up hundreds of thousands of votes.” – Sunday Times (£)
“This brings us back, I’m afraid, to that terrible Bullingdon Club photograph that everybody is so determined to expunge. What was so disturbing about the image of those young men was not their wealth or even their arrogance: it was the hint of cruelty. I can remember thinking that I would not have wanted to run into that bunch of guys in a restaurant. Yes, of course, our perception of them now is different: they are decent fellows, family men who are devoted to their children. But why, then, should they encourage a reminder of that fatal earlier idea of themselves?” – Daily Telegraph
“Senior security sources say there has been a “policy change” towards Russian intelligence officers operating in the UK. MI5 bosses have told the counter-espionage branch of the security service to step up surveillance against Kremlin-backed agents on the streets of London. Intelligence chiefs are also recruiting Russian speakers to MI5, MI6 and GCHQ as security chiefs warn that a new Cold War is under way.” – Sunday Times (£)
“Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, the former defence secretary warns that the West must “wake up” to the reality of the Kremlin’s “clear strategic plan” to dominate Europe from the Baltics to the Balkans. European states must prioritise national security over welfare and foreign aid, and equip the Ukrainian government with anti-tank weapons, surveillance drones and encrypted technology, Dr Fox argues.” – Sunday Telegraph
“IS appears to have the human and financial resources to fight a long war, though both are under strain. According to interviews by The Independent with people living in Mosul reached by phone, or with recent refugees from the city, IS officials are conscripting at least one young man from every family in Mosul, which has a population of 1.5 million. It has drafted a list of draconian punishments for those not willing to fight, starting with 80 lashes and ending with execution.” – Independent on Sunday
> Today: ToryDiary – The triviality of this election campaign, the seriousness of events abroad
> Yesterday:
“They said his reputation as a “safe pair of hands” had been shattered when he failed to name a single Labour business backer and told voters they should get a receipt for work done cash in hand, both of which attracted ridicule.Senior figures also expressed frustration and incredulity that Balls has dug his heels in over funding a cut in English tuition fees from £9,000 to £6,000 a year — three years after Miliband first backed the policy and with the announcement due at the end of this week.” – Sunday Times (£)
“In a controversial move, the Labour leader has appointed Lord Prescott as his personal adviser with specific responsibility for climate change. His remit, according to aides, is to “bash heads together”…However, the surprise appointment will inevitably be seen as a way to shore up Labour’s traditional working-class vote and address growing concerns that Miliband and the shadow cabinet are failing to cut through to the electorate.” – The Guardian
More Labour news:
“It equally suits the short-term electoral interests of the Tories, if not the long-term health of the union that Mr Cameron claims to care so much about, if the nationalists rob Labour of a lot of its seats north of the border…if Mr Miliband were the runner-up in seats it would be a helluva a lot less likely that he could form and justify a Labour-led government. At every UK election for nearly a century, the party with the most seats has won the keys to power.” – Observer
“Handing out purple leaflets and dressed head to toe in purple, Victoria Ayling looks every inch the Ukip candidate. But she’s not chasing Tory votes in Essex and Kent; she has her sights set at Labour in its once safe seat of Great Grimsby in Lincolnshire. Commentators and pollsters have identified the constituency as a key target in the general election. Most of the attention has focused on Nigel Farage in South Thanet, but it’s here in the North, where the party is seeking to win Labour votes, that Ukip has one of the best chances of winning.” – Independent on Sunday
> Today: Adrian Hilton on Comment – UKIP’s grammar school policy is a dog’s breakfast
> Yesterday: ToryDiary – What future awaits UKIP’s libertarians?
“Mrs Bruce has tabled an amendment to the Serious Crime Bill which would ‘put beyond doubt’ that it should be a prosecutable offence for a doctor in the UK to abort a baby on the basis of gender. The MP, who claims wide cross-party support for the measure, says the reform is required because in 2012 the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to charge two doctors who were caught agreeing to abort female babies.” – Mail on Sunday
“The city’s bishop, Graham James…launched the first guidance notes from Church of England bishops to voters before the general election. These pull no punches in condemning an “almost moribund political culture”,attacking a society that “celebrates equality” but “treats the poor and vulnerable as unwanted, unvalued and unnoticed”, and appealing for a “fresh moral vision of the kind of country we want to be”. Anyone wanting to see how that vision might work in practice can do so in Norwich, spreading out into all areas of community engagement from its Anglican churches.” – Observer
“The Daily Telegraph faced a public outcry yesterday after publishing an article that used the suicides of two people to attack News UK, the publisher of The Times and The Sunday Times. Various tweets described it as “disgusting” and “a new low”, and suggested the newspaper was “losing its credibility”. The Daily Telegraph disabled the comment function when it put the article on its website. The newspaper was accused last week by Peter Oborne — its former chief political commentator — and other publications, of failing to pursue the HSBC tax avoidance story because the bank was one of its biggest advertisers.” – Sunday Times (£)