General Election 2015: Ed Balls hits out at George Osborne’s “dodgy dossier” spending report January 5, 2015 Shadow chancellor Ed Balls yesterday hit back at claims that Labour’s made over £20bn of unfunded spending commitments for 2015-16, accusing George Osborne of publishing a “dodgy dossier, riddled with untruths and errors”. The emotive phrase, coined following the publication of the Iraq war dossier which was later found to contain a string of mistakes [...]
The City must make the case for EU reform – for the sake of all Europe January 5, 2015 The General Election looms large at the start of this New Year. For practical reasons, business prizes stability and places a premium on calm trading conditions, as major changes in policy have an unsettling effect on potential investors. And few decisions will have such a far reaching impact on the UK economy as what we [...]
General Election 2015: Back to the 30s? How Labour is misleading the electorate January 5, 2015 Friday 19 December 2014 was a happy day for many Londoners, marking their last in the office before Christmas. Yet amid all the festivities, you’d have been forgiven for missing something equally joyous. That Friday also marked the official start of the “long” UK general election campaign. Mercifully, the parties struck something of a [...]
Ed Miliband accuses British businesses of recruiting workers at “slave wages” January 5, 2015 Labour leader Ed Miliband has kicked off his party's election campaign with a major speech in Manchester setting out his party's offer to the British people. Miliband tackled many themes of his leadership, including the cost of living and the NHS. He also didn't make the mistake of forgetting to mention the deficit or immigration [...]
Tories launch pre-election attack on Labour spending January 4, 2015 George Osborne will today launch a stinging attack on Labour ahead of the election, claiming that a win for Ed Miliband’s party would spell billions of pounds of unfunded spending commitments and tax hikes for the UK. The chancellor is set to unveil detailed spending analysis by Treasury officials of the policies Labour has already [...]
David Cameron’s absence from Labour spending review launch is a subtle but clever political trap – Bottom Line January 4, 2015 David Cameron’s decision not to attend the launch of a key spending review into Labour’s election pledges this morning speaks volumes about the type of campaign he plans to run. Up until now commentators have predicted that the Tories will use the Prime Minister at every given opportunity, safe in the knowledge that Ed Miliband’s [...]
General Election 2015 advertising: The campaign posters that flatter to deceive January 4, 2015 The parties’ main campaigns kick off today, but electoral advertising is already in full swing. In the first skirmishes of the upcoming general election campaign, two old-fashioned outdoor posters have been causing controversy. Both the Labour Party and the Conservatives unveiled posters over the weekend that have been subject to much nitpicking [...]
UK finance chiefs rate general election as their biggest risk January 4, 2015 Growing political and economic uncertainty is becoming a problem for the UK’s largest companies, survey data released today shows. When asked to rate the level of risk posed between 0 and 100, chief financial officers (CFOs) attached a 63 rating to May’s General Election and 56 to economic weakness in Europe and the possibility of [...]
Conservative and Labour General Election campaign posters- in pictures January 4, 2015 (Source: Getty) And so it begins. The countdown to the general election has kicked off unceremoniously with a German road upstaging the Conservative's message. David Cameron’s “road to recovery” poster was unveiled, trumpeting the party's strengthening of the economy as well as supporting its argument that Labour can’t be trusted with such matters. Within [...]
Andy Burnham says Labour will spend £2.5bn a year to add 32,000 staff to the NHS January 4, 2015 Labour is evoking the spirit of Blair’s 1997 victory by attacking the Conservatives on the NHS. The shadow health secretary Andy Burnham has said if Labour is elected in May, it will invest £2.5bn a year in an NHS “time to care” fund, which will pay for 20,000 more nurses, 8,000 more GPs and an [...]