Politicians should follow John Major’s example and get a soapbox

• Michael Crick Political Correspondent

All the parties have been slow to bring out their big beasts in this campaign. Where’s Heseltine? Where’s Mandelson? Where’s Gordon Brown? Well, today we get a glimpse of John Major, speaking in the West Midlands.

Sir John will probably go down as the Tory leader who led his party to their worst ever defeat, in 1997. But it should also be remembered that he also led them to one of their most unexpected and substantial victories. In 1992, he only won by 21 seats, but that failed to reflect his decisive seven per cent margin over Labour. And the 14 million votes the Conservatives got in 1992 were the highest achieved by any British party. In history. Ever.

Halfway through the 1992 campaign John Major decided to abandon his previous methods, and return to the street-fighting style he’d learned as a young man in south London, where on Saturdays he’d regularly harangued shoppers from a soap-box near Brixton Market.

FOR MORE, VISIT MICHAEL CRICK’S BLOG

Is sense at last breaking out?

• Alex Thomson Chief Correspondent

Are real politics about to happen in this election?

I can’t speak for rest of UK but I awake this morning to be told Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy will address a street rally at St Enoch’s tube station on Glasgow at 11.

Hallelujah and well done then!

Also no paranoid note from the press office email trying to tell the mainstream media not to publicise this in advance lest some real people might turn up.

I have been outspoken for a long time about this plastic, unreal election – therefore it is time to say fair play to Mr Murphy and his team – and for doing so in Scotland’s biggest and pro-independent city as well.

Today should be fun because it will be real – no PR clampdown on life; no stupid plastic wristbands of the SNP and Tory manifesto launches – real, open debate.

Ed Miliband: It’s ‘fine’ if I have to pay Labour’s mansion tax

Ed Miliband has been on BBC Breakfast TV this morning where he has said that people like him – those who have enough money to be hit with the proposed mansion tax on £2 million plus properties – should “pay a little more” to fund the NHS.

He has also made good use of Lord Forsyth’s intervention warning David Cameron that he was “threatening the integrity of the UK with the games that he’s playing” by bigging up the SNP.

The Labour leader said the warning from the former Conservative Scottish minister showed that the Tory tactics were “dangerous” proved that Conservatives were “ashamed” of the Prime Minister’s strategy.

Conservative Leader of the Commons William Hague has denied Tories were “talking up” the SNP, telling BBC1’s Breakfast: “I think John Major is absolutely right to say what he is going to say in his speech today and to point to the danger of people who want to break up the United Kingdom in effect running the United Kingdom, if they hold the balance of power in Parliament.

Half a million people register to vote online in just one day

• Georgia Graham georgia.graham@itn.co.uk

A polling station during the Scottish referendum last year

A massive surge on the final day of registration saw almost half a million people sign up to vote in the general election yesterday.

It is the first time voters have been able to register to vote online and yesterday was the last chance for potential voters to register before the election on May 7.

The overwhelming majority of the  485,000 people who registered online were young voters. 137,400 people under the age of 24 registered to vote on 20 April alone – around 16 times the number of people of pension age (5,303 2,893) registering on that same day.

Apathy among young voters has long been a challenge for political parties, and their perceived lack of interest and real failure to turn up at the polls have led some to argue many political policies and incentives are unfairly skewed towards older constituents who do actually vote.

The 25 to 34 young adult age group also saw strong growth with 152,273 people signing up in a single day using the electoral commission’s online system.

New laws on registration of voters mean that a “head of household” is no longer allowed to register all voters in one house, but instead each individual must register individually. Similarly universities will no longer be able to act as “head of household” for all of their live-in students. The electoral commission describes the previous system as an “out-of-date Victorian” method of registering voters.

According to the office of national statistics more than 800,000 voters had disappeared from the electoral roll in 2014 after the registration method came into effect. However these do not include those who have registered since December 1, 2014.

The figures have shown that constituencies with the biggest fall have a strong university presence. The largest drop was in Cardiff Central which saw an 18.3 per cent drop, followed by Liverpool Riverside, Newcastle upon Tyne East, Nottingham South and Ceredigion.

However the electoral commission believes that this will be outweighed by young people choosing to take five minutes to register online instead of being put off by having to fill in a time consuming form and physically posting it, with hundreds of thousands of new voters signed up through the new system.

Alex Thomson awaits a politician who is ready to brave the real streets

• Alex Thomson Chief Correspondent

Bottom of Buchanan Street and a political leader on the a streets is a news event. We have plenty if media here.

They are erecting a small stage platform for Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy.

A man with Scottish Resitance t-shirt has appeared with loud jailer and siren taking about “British imperialism” and saying he is nothing to do with the SNP.

John Major: the SNP are a real and present danger to our future

John Major is talking about his own feelings about devolution. he says that he warned “again and again” in 1992 and in 1997 that “devolution would lead up to the break up of the United Kingdom”.

He says that Labour pushed forward on the issue for their own “partisan electoral advantage” and “ignored all the risks”.

He said that Labour said devolution would “kill independence stone dead” but instead it fanned the flames of independence.

It is to Labour’s credit, he says, that they fought for the union last year, but he adds: “the Union was batter but it survived, now it is put at risk again”.

He haws moved on from attacking Labour now to a direct attack on the SNP.

“Let me not mince my words”, he says, and he is certainly not doing that as he continues:

“The SNP re a real and present danger to our future, they will pit Scotland against England” and could bring the issue independence to the core of this election.

John Major: We will never be born equal because life just isn’t like that

• Georgia Graham georgia.graham@itn.co.uk

Sir John is in full older statesman mode now. He says that he was drawn to the conservatives almost sixty years ago and has dedicated his “life’s work” to the ethos of the Conservative party.

He tells the audience in Solihull: “We will never be born equal because life isn’t like that, he adds, but it it is the Conservative mission in life to make people as equal as we can make them. He says that is what drew me to the party six decades ago.

He says Labour were “generously and kind-heartedly ” offering me a hand out, the Conservatives offered me a hand up.

Sir John has a good line on the Conservatives: He says that they might not “wear their heart on their sleeves” but they do care.

“My family had nothing, so ask yourself why i would give my lifetimes work to a party that did not care about people in need?”

He adds: “They may not wear their heart on their sleeve but it beats just as strongly to help people as any other political party in this country or anywhere in the world.”

Nigel Farage: James Bond must be male and a rogue – I’d give it a go

David Cameron: The SNP would be bad for Yorkshire

David Cameron on the campaign trail yesterday

The Conservative leader says that SNP involvement in and Government would be “very bad for areas like Yorkshire”.

Speaking in Horsforth, West Yorkshire, in the half-built offices of a clinical software firm Mr Cameron said that if a Labour / SNP was formed, the English regions wouldn’t get a “look-in” and all attention would be focused on Scotland.

Victoria Macdonald: Why won’t Labour commit to the £8 billion NHS plug?

• Victoria Macdonald Health and Social Care Correspondent

In the very fine surroundings of the British Library, the health leaders have been put up in front of a group of health experts, think tanks, patient groups and health journalists.

Jeremy Hunt was late arriving (when he arrived he raised a laugh by saying there had been ‘a toxic, top down reorganisation of the London traffic that nobody wanted or voted for).

So it was up to Andy Burnham to kick off with that other toxic subject: why Labour isn’t committing to the £8bn gap in funding by 2020.

He says it’s about making changes to the way NHS finances work and that will happen, he says, through integration and making the default place for care to be at home.

Norman Lamb wants a non-partisan commission of all parties, patient and staff groups and unions to come up with a new settlement for the NHS and care

Julia Reid for UKIP says ‘despite what some people say’ they want and NHS free at the point of use’. Of course, the critics only say that because of UKIP’s previous discussions on charging.

Finally, Jeremy Hunt says when faced with the ‘horror of Mid-Staffs’ the Government has made this the safest system in the world.

But to deal with the growing elderly population, there needs to be the funding and ‘we can do that with a strong economy’.

When you cut through the debate over £8bn, there seems to be less between the parties than you might imagine. There needs to be better integration between health and care and that the growing elderly population is going to cost a lot of money.

Nick Clegg: Stop the smugglers who are ‘peddling this terrible trade’

A migrant disembarks from the Italian Coast Guard ship Gregretti

The Liberal Democrat leader has again responded to the deaths in the Mediterranean, reiterating his argument that stopping the smugglers at the source should be the priority rather then new patrols.

He said that more aid and assistance offered to Africa would stop people risking “life and limb” in the first place. The solution, he says, is on land not at sea.

He told Sky News: “But in terms of this problem – and it’s a longstanding problem – of large numbers of people moving from North Africa seeking to somehow, by hook or by crook, making their way into Europe, I think the solution has to be found on land in North Africa rather than measures at sea in the Mediterranean.”

The Conservatives deploy ‘the John Major story’

• Tim Bouverie Political Producer

John Major has just finished giving a quiet but powerful speech to Conservative supporters in Solihull.

The stuff about the ‘danger’ from the SNP,  briefed to the papers overnight,  wasn’t new, but this didn’t stop Sir John adding his weight  to the warning:  the SNP he said is “a clear and present danger” and would create “merry hell” as they barter their way towards their end goal of Scottish Independence.

But the most memorable bits of the speech were the personal ones.  Sir John told us that he wasn’t born into the Conservative party – “My family had absolutely nothing”- but preferred the Conservatives offering him “a hand up” to Labour offering him “a hand down”.

This is something which, for obvious reasons, David Cameron could never say.

Sir John may may have led the Tories to their worst ever defeat in 1997 but for his ‘story’ as well as the gravitas which comes with having held the highest office in the land he is an asset to the party.

Paddy Ashdown on John Major’s ‘bastards’

• Georgia Graham georgia.graham@itn.co.uk

The Liberal Democrat has been on the BBC to discuss John Major and said ‘bastard’ six times in four minutes.

He was referencing the 1993 incident when John Major described three of his colleagues as ‘bastards’, thought to refer to Eurosceptic colleagues who were putting him under pressure of Britain’s future in Europe.

Sir John’s comments were made during a private chat after he had been interviewed by Michael Brunson, Political Editor of ITN, unaware that the interview was being fed to the BBC, who were still recording. Someone from the BBC leaked it to The Observer.

Last year Mr Major said last year: “Calling three of my colleagues bastards was absolutely unforgivable, my only excuse is that it was true.”

Mr Ashdown says that the Conservatives will be held to account in a similar way by Ukip.

Matt Frei: Migrants say they don’t want to come to Britain because UK may leave EU

Matt Frei is speaking to migrants who have made the journey from Africa to Sicily, Italy. He says they do not intend to come to the UK.

Miriam Gonzalez: Politicians’ wives shouldn’t have a victim complex

• Georgia Graham georgia.graham@itn.co.uk

Miriam with Nick Clegg at a campaigning event last month

The wife of Nick Clegg is giving a web-chat on Mumsnet, it’s very revealing – not least because Ms Gonzalez is so down with the Mumsnet lingo.

She has just been asked who is the brightest, her (she’s an international lawyer thought to be earning hundreds of thousands) or Nick Clegg. She replies: “My DH is the brightest, but I compensate with effort what I did not get through nature… and I eventually get there!”

She can’t even vote, she adds, so she won’t be standing anytime soon.

Interestingly Mr Clegg’s wife adds that she has has no truck with the ‘victim complex’ of the politicians and their families who are in the public eye, telling one reader: “Having been married to Nick, the Deputy prime Minister of this country for the last five years, and seeing British politics so close-by has been a privilege.

“I do not agree ‘at all’ with the victim complex that seems to be applied recently to some politicians and their families.

“If there are difficult times we deal with them together as a family, as I suppose most families do. But I can guarantee you that most of what families of politicians go through is nothing in comparison to the issues that other families have to deal with.”

She adds that she likes the US programme the Good Wife, about a politician: “For my taste the Good Wife… though for Daily Mail standards she would be the Bad Wife!”

She has also revealed she’s been running a food blog with her sons, who look like pretty good chefs in training.

Miriam Clegg’s food blog

• Georgia Graham georgia.graham@itn.co.uk

In a little surprise to Mr Clegg’s advisors his wife Miriam Gonzalez-Durantez has revealed she has been running a food blog with her children for the last three years.

I wonder how many kitchens the Cleggs have?

Miriam Clegg’s food blog

“I actually have a cooking blog with my children that I have been running with them for the last three years (when my husband’s advisers learn this they are going to freak out!).

“Just click on www.mumandsons.com and you can get some of the recipes we do…. Now since I am going to be told off for sharing this with you, just promise me that in exchange you will register at the Inspiring Women Campaign (I am going to be watching!).

“We only ask for one hour per year from every woman – everybody can do it! And I promise you it is a lot of fun.”

It’s rather good and has almost 45,000 page views too.

Student debt: is it worth it?

Jim Murphy and the rough and tumble of election politics

• Matthew Moore Producer

“SNP are w******!” “Bunch of fannies!” You know you’re covering a stump speech north of Carlisle when you hear such colourful contributions to our political discourse.

It was the Scottish Labour leader’s first major foray onto the streets to be among the electorate in a campaign which has been criticised for its stage control.

For Murphy though, like Sturgeon, it’s an environment he’s more than capable in. He thrives on the rough and tumble of this type of politics, having managed 100 such stump speeches in his campaign to keep Scotland in the union last year.

It’s that campaign – specifically being on the same side as the Tories – that hangs over the Labour party in Scotland, eating away at its core support, dogging them at every turn.

As Murphy found when he pulled away to hop into his waiting car. A passing taxi driver had slowed down, lowered his window and extended a hand in that trademark Glaswegian style. Anyone would have forgiven the Labour leader for expecting a pleasant exchange with a supporter. “I’m voting SNP! Labour in bed with the Tories!” shouted the cabbie.

“All right mate, see you later,” sounded a weary Jim.

Why do doctors want to be MPs?

The BMJ has an interesting analysis of why so many doctors want to become politicians.

They point out that 19 doctors are standing as candidates for the three main political parties: 11 for the Conservative party, six for the Labour party, and two for the Liberal Democrats. A number of doctors are standing for other parties, including four for the UK Independence party (UKIP) and seven for the National Health Action party (NHAP).

Every election, they say between five and nine doctors are elected.

Sarah Wollaston, a former GP and Conservative MP for Totnes, said that most doctors already have the skills required to be an MP. “The ability to prioritise, to work collaboratively, to be able to explain, to be comfortable communicating with people who are very angry, and to be able to speak in public and explain what you are doing—all are skills that many doctors use every day and perhaps they don’t realise that they have had all the training needed to be an MP.”

Nigel Farage: There is also a ‘half black’ person in our manifesto

Nigel Farage on the campaign trail earlier this week

Nigel Farage has been challenged again over why a journalist was booed when they asked him why there was only one black person featured in his manifesto.

He said that as well as a “fully black person” (who was featured on the international aid page) there was also a “half black” person photographed for the manifesto who didn’t get a mention.

He said: “Well firstly there was one fully black person. There was another one of our leading spokesman who is half black and that didn’t get a mention. So the premise was wrong.

I thought what happened was really interesting. There was a journalist from one of our leading daily newspapers who made the comment you know, there’s only one black.

“And what happened was that there was an eruption in the room as our black and ethnic minority candidates stood up and looked at this guy in a pretty hostile way.

“What they were saying was we’re just about sick to death of the sneering media class trying to make Ukip out to be something completely other than it is.

“We’re a non-racist, non-sectarian political party but we don’t have all female quotas, we don’t have all black quotas, we treat everybody as being equal.

“Over 10% of our candidates come from BME backgrounds. We’re probably more diverse in our membership than some of the other parties who talk about all of this in a sort of ‘holier than thou’ way.”

Young Republicans parachuted in to help Conservative bid

The Conservatives have drafted in a group of young Republican activists to help out in key election battlegrounds before the election.

A team organised by the US Young Republicans International Committee will arrive on 2 May to help out in the marginal of Enfield North, and the constituency of Aylesbury, the Guardian reports.

An invitation to attend the week urges Young Republicans International members to “help our Conservative colleagues win”.

The advert reads: “YRNF’s programme will begin on Saturday 2 May in London, followed by four days of campaigning for Conservative candidates in three different constituencies and a chance to participate in election day itself.”

David Cameron heckled over the NHS

Lord Tebbit hits out at Cameron’s SNP attacks

• Georgia Graham georgia.graham@itn.co.uk

Lord Tebbit has said that the Conservative effort to paint SNP as the real ‘threat’ is ‘puzzling’ and may push Conservative voters towards Labour, a distraction from the core battle for 326 Conservative MPs.

In fact he says that it is “pointless to irritate Scots just by shouting at them from Westminster”.

It comes after Lord Forsyth, the former Conservative Scottish secretary, said Mr Cameron’s campaign attacks on the SNP risk undermining the future of the United Kingdom.

According Laura Kuenssberg of Newsnight Lord Tebbit also suggests David Cameron is unlike politicians of previous generations who were ‘real men’.

Lord Tebbit said: “What I find puzzling now is the prime minister’s position that the SNP is far worse than Labour because, if so, as there are not many seats in Scotland where the Conservative Party has a chance to win, the logic would seem to be that Conservatives should vote tactically for Labour as the lesser of two evils.

“I think it’s a huge scare tactic against Labour and whether the particular seat in the House of Commons is occupied by a Labour member or an SNP member perhaps it’s not a great difference.

He added: “Having bungled the Scottish referendum it seems pointless to just irritate Scots by shouting at them from Westminster – the English are irritated into voting for Ukip, by being shouted at from Westminster – and the Scots are irritated similarly.”

Labour accuse Conservatives of ‘reprehensible’ campaign over SNP attacks

Mr Miliband has also been on ITV news to brand David Cameron’s attacks on Labour’s possible future deals with the SNP as “reprehensible”. Lucy Powell, the Vice-Chair of Labour’s General Election Campaign Lucy Powell meanwhile, writes: “The Tories have spent days talking up the SNP because they cannot defend their record and are losing the argument about the future of our country. “Now we know how extreme their desperation has become, because they are relying on John Major who himself has said he would be prepared to sacrifice the Union for partisan gain.”

Boris Johnson: We have a moral duty to help the Med migrants

Boris Johnson is out campaigning in Kent and appears to be urging Britain to take a more central role in the rescue and support of migrants making the dangerous journey from Africa to Europe. He says:

I think it is an absolute tragedy and obviously we must do whatever we can to help the humanitarian response. I totally support that and I support the efforts the Italian and other authorities are making.

If you’re asking, do I think that we should withdraw a humanitarian response, my answer to you of course is absolutely not.

It’s our moral duty to help where we can.

Obviously the majority of the burden for this will fall on the countries most immediately affected and that’s only natural.

But Britain is a great country and a compassionate country and if we can help them I think we should.

David Cameron: Well… this looks like a pretty good door frame

The Conservative leader wins ‘high viz photo opportunity of the day’ with this gem:

DUP and the Routemaster: made in N Ireland, destined for London

• Andy Davies Home Affairs Correspondent

Centre stage at the DUP manifesto launch today was a London Routemaster bus. Made in Antrim, destined for London, and in this case Parliament Square (it was a no.24). Which is exactly where this party predicts the spoils of electoral battle await them, in the event of a hung parliament.

They posed for photos at the back of the bus and, of course, pointedly, in the driver’s seat. A “once in a lifetime opportunity”, they said, presenting a manifesto described as a “template for negotiations”.

So what price DUP support? I asked the party leader Peter Robinson on board the no.24 (a senior DUP colleague recently spoke about “hundreds of millions” in extra funding in return for the party propping up any minority government).

“It would be very foolish,” replied Robinson, “if I started negotiations at this stage in a London bus”. It would certainly be novel.

TNS poll gives Labour 2 point lead

SNP: A path to fiscal autonomy, but do the sums add up?

• Paul Mason Economics Editor

We’re at a moment of elite incomprehension over Scotland.  When a magazine like the Economist berates Nicola Sturgeon for moderating her manifesto, calling it a “suicide note”, you realise how disorienting was the bomb the SNP dropped into politics with its manifesto yesterday.

Let us review the fiscal outlines of what the SNP proposes. It wants – as the IFS explains today – to take the amount of Scottish public spending controlled by Holyrood from its current level – around 7 per cent as calculated by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, to several tens of billions more.

If Westminster sticks to the principle of the Barnett formula, whereby further moves to devolution come with “no detriment” to Scotland, then any costs associated with such increased fiscal freedom would go on being funded by the taxpayers of the whole UK.

However, at the moment Scotland became fiscally autonomous – that is, raising and spending most of its taxes itself – the Barnett principle would be over. Then the gap between Scottish spending and taxation would appear as a transparent “Scottish deficit”, which as the IFS points out would be bigger, percentage wise, than that of the whole UK’s.

Specifically, if nothing else changed, an IFS report today says Scotland would be running a £9.7bn deficit by 2019, compared to a UK surplus. However the SNP’s case is based on the assertion that almost everything would change.

Read the analysis in full

Bets placed on Labour candidate to topple Conservative cabinet member

Esther McVey

The Liverpool echo is reporting that £5000 has been placed on Labour’s Margaret Greenwood winning the Wirral West seat from Esther McVey in recent days. The seat, which is a very close marginal, was won Ms McVey by just 2,436 votes in 2010. According to bookmakers it is one of the most bet on seats in the election so far.

Pick of the campaign trail: Tuesday, April 21

John Major joins the campaign trail

David Cameron on the campaign trail in the Calder Valley

Nigel Farage tries out some hats in a Ukip supporting small business in Canterbury

Nick Clegg examines some fish in Cornwall

Ed Miliband gives a speech on his party’s ‘NHS rescue plan’

Labour supporters use posters to shield themselves from the sun

Grant Shapps denies Wikipedia claims he has edited rivals’ pages

Grant Shapps has categorically denied claims that he is behind changes made to the Wikipedia pages of political rivals after the Guardian reported that the site has blocked a user that is operated by the Conservative party chairman or “someone on his behalf”.

Wikipedia says it has blocked a user called “Contribsx” from making edits on the site and claimed that the account was operated by Mr Shapps or someone close to him.

However a spokesman for the Conservatives said that the allegation is “categorically false” from “start to finish” and has claimed the story is simply a “smear” from Labour.

Hunt, Lamb, Burnham – and an NHS ménage à trois

Looking at Jeremy Hunt, Andy Burnham and Norman Lamb today at the #healthdebate, my mind turned to ménage a trois.

You know? There’s the married couple, they get on OK but there have been tensions, and so a third person comes a long to spice things up.

And so it is with this lot. Jeremy Hunt and Norman Lamb have worked alongside each other at the Department of Health for a while now and mostly it has been fine apart from the (my sources tell me) blazing rows over mental health.

Now Andy Burnham pops up and Norman Lamb is intrigued…. Read more here

Nick Clegg speaks to Jon Snow on migrants, Nigel Farage and tuition fees

• Jon Snow Presenter

John Major: SNP is a real and present danger to our future

• Michael Crick Political Correspondent